In the course of this paper, I intend to discuss the use of rhetoric between competing factions within nontraditional software development communities. Specifically, I will explore the differences between the subcommunity which calls itself "Open Source," and their chief opponent, the members of the "Free Software" subcommunity.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has collected a number of texts dealing not only with their own development model, preferred buzz-words, and snippets of underlying philosophies concerning these, but also dealing with their opposition to "Open Source." Along with the texts hosted by the FSF, their founder and president Richard M. Stallman is a well-known speaker, and has made a number of speeches which support exclusively "Free Software" at the expense of both "proprietary software" and "Open Source Software."
The Open Source Initiative (OSI), by contrast, has amassed a similar collection of writings dealing chiefly with their marketing strategies, their buzz-words, the underlying philosophies, and a very few attacks on the "Free Software" community. Though their direct opposition to the FSF is perhaps more discreet than the FSF's opposition toward the OSI, their founder, Eric S. Raymond, has also written pointed attacks at the "Free Software" community, while continuously pushing, primarily, 
against "proprietary software."
I will be evaluating the rhetoric of each of these communities based on the goals which the respective communities and organizations are attempting to reach and their effectiveness not in their ability to surpass a common opposing force such as "proprietary software," but in their ability to prove greater value in their own philosophy over that of a competing faction.
I expect to find that the "Free Software" community has a stronger, more utopian philosophy, which is well defended, though less pragmatic. I also expect to find that, given that the audience for each of these groups tends to be Americans, that, if the "Open Source" community puts forth a more pragmatic argument, they will likely be the most effective at establishing their superiority.
This topic is highly specific. It is so specific, in fact, that I have found no previous rhetorical research. All other research approaching this area has focused on the rhetoric of non-traditional software development models of opposed to the rhetoric of traditional development models. It is an unfortunate result of this research that the resulting picture has glossed over the differences between the factions within the non-traditional model.
The implications of this finding are, themselves, intersting, raising the additional issue of the real value of any survey analyses of any topic. That is, if the body of research addressing non-traditional software models has not yet reached, and may not, at upper academic levels, ever reach, the depths of this topic, we may not know what other topics contain such a complexity, and what more could we learn about rhetoric within subdivided communities such as the non-traditional software development model communities.
Important documents which I think will shed light on this corner of rhetoric are the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page at the OSI's website, the essay "Why 'Free Software' is better than 'Open Source', and the Wikipedia entries titled, respectively, "Free Software," and "Open Source."
I would like to take a moment, now, to defend my use of Wikipedia as a source. First, the source code for the servers which run Wikipedia are Free Software, as defined by the FSF, and are Open Source, as defined by the OSI. It is, technologically, common ground. It is also rhetorically common ground. All have an equal voice on Wikipedia, and the articles discussing these two topics allow each side to express their views, and, ultimately, to expose the differences of the two movements mutually. It may be the only place in the world where nearly everyone agrees to disagree. Wikipedia, while possibly lacking in academic value in other fields, is, in my opinion, invaluable to the field of rhetoric, where researchers can see exactly what the differences are between any two sides on any conflict, and use that as a template to evaluate other sources of rhetoric within the same conflict. This is my proposed usage for the Wikipedia entries.
My procedure, then, will be as follows. I will briefly summarize the differences within the movements from information gleaned from the pages of Wikipedia. I will then use these agreed-upon differences to expose the rhetoric on either side, and evaluate it based on three categories. First, its effectiveness in combatting its opposing rhetoric. Second, its effectiveness in the direction which it is most focused. Finally, I will examine what the outcome is of each of the effectiveness of the rhetoric in these two directions.