Terminology
This glossary defines the vocabulary used by the community.
Contents
Aggragator
A business that aggregates product or service from multiple producers (YouTube, Netfix, etc.).
Business
A producer wishing to make money. This definition includes non-profit organizations.
Consumer
A consumer in the traditional passive sense. A consumer consumes goods and services without taking any active role in producing contents or contributing to existing ones. However, in some context the term may also means all consumers, including prosumers.
Economy of Free
Economy of Free (or Free Culture economy) = producers of free + free products&services + consumers of free + prosumers of free + free payments.
Free
Unless clearly stated, Free (or free, or FREE or free or free...) always means free as in speech and not free as in beer.
Free Product
As per the Free Cultural Works Definition released by freedomdefined.org.
Free Service
I'm not aware of any formal definition of Free Service (freedomdefined.org was working on one but it seems stalled since 2007). The closest thing I found is the Open Software Service Definition provided by opendefinition.org. I'm not sure of its completeness but it's good enough for now.
FLOSS
FLOSS, FOSS or OSS/FS? These acronyms describe the same ecosystem: Free Software + Open Source Software.
We choose to use the more popular one according to Google: FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software).
Open Business
I'm not aware of any formal definition of the concept of open business. There is one in Wikipedia but, it is heavily bias toward a specific implementation of an open business model. In this wiki, open business simply means transparency and accountability. This definition conforms with the best source on the subject I know of[1] and reflects a certain concensus on the web. Note that, with this definition, being an open business does not necessarily means using open source software or producing open source stuff.
Open Knowledge
As per wikipedia definition.
Producer
Any individual or organization, legally recognized or not, providing products or services, or both.
Prosumer
The new internet consumer. Not only does he consumes goods and services but he contributes actively to existing contents through comments on blogs, discussions in forums, etc.
SABD
Self-appointed benevolent dictator.