In the past there were essentially two camps to choose from when procuring your organisations software. You could either buy software “off the shelf” that met your needs, or develop software to meet your specific requirements. In some cases, such as word processing the choice was obvious. Similarly when a company needs to do a very specific job there is often no existing software leaving little choice but develop software from scratch. Now there is a third alternative.

Is open source about giving software to users for nothing or creative freedom for software developers? My question is rooted in the observation that most people I know who are "users" - that is people who are not able to program computers, but use computers, have little appreciation of open source, except as it gives them some nifty free - as in cost - software.

I have always maintained that overloading a plain English term with a secondary meaning is asking for trouble. The term "free software" to me has always been associated with software at no cost. Its an up hill battle to try and explain to people that what you mean when you say "free software" is different to theirs.

Today I saw a classic example of someone using the "free of cost" meaning. Can we be critical of this use? I don't think so, after all it is the Free Software movement that is trying to change the popularly accepted meaning.

The following submission was prepared by the New Zealand Open Source Society to address the Patent Bill 235­1 currently before the Commerce Committee. The New Zealand Open Source Society wishes to be heard relating the the Patent Bill.