3 ms·

> Many people in the Open Source community go out of their way to make sure they are not thrown into the free software bucket. Citation needed.

jordigh 10y ago
I don't know about "many people", but I have some examples. The popular book, The Architecture of Open Source Applications absolutely refused to change its title to "The Architecture of Free and Open Source Applications" when I requested it. There are people who think that "free software" is the loony bin and absolutely refuse to be associated to it. There are examples of that in this HN thread. There are also people who call themselves "free software" and disagree with the FSF, although they don't disagree on what "free software" means. OpenBSD is a clear example (look at their release song lyrics).
- bad_user 10y ago
  I understand "Open Source", I understand "Free Software", but to be honest, I always thought the "Free and Open Source Software" (FOSS) term is just stupid. We have a local saying: it's like trying to reconcile both the goat and the cabbage.
  - jordigh 10y ago
    It's more like trying to reconcile "climate change" and "global warming". Two terms for the same thing with different political slant.
- arsenide 10y ago
  Do you have evidence that their refusal was due to their views, or is it speculation on your part?
  - jordigh 10y ago
    They were quite clear that they did not want to be associated to free software and were very annoyed and unreceptive to the idea. I can't find the exchange now, but it definitely happened. I think it was over email.
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
You can so the experiment yourself and go to open source projects and ask to go with gpl for future contributions and to put free software into he readme :)
- ex_amazon_sde 10y ago
  The tone in "Many people" and "go out of their way to make sure" makes it sounds quite different. Almost as if the majority of developers were actively refusing to touch GPL code. I've been working with many developers and I can say with confidence that the large majority has only mild preferences and does not refuse to use or send patches to a project simply due to licensing. Asking people to change license of an existing project is quite demanding and takes more effort that doing nothing which makes it an unfair comparison.
  - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
    > Almost as if the majority of developers were actively refusing to touch GPL code. I would say the majority of developers who are writing Open Source code go out of their way to ensure they are not touching GPL code.

jordigh 10y ago

I don't know about "many people", but I have some examples. The popular book, The Architecture of Open Source Applications absolutely refused to change its title to "The Architecture of Free and Open Source Applications" when I requested it. There are people who think that "free software" is the loony bin and absolutely refuse to be associated to it. There are examples of that in this HN thread. There are also people who call themselves "free software" and disagree with the FSF, although they don't disagree on what "free software" means. OpenBSD is a clear example (look at their release song lyrics).

bad_user 10y ago
I understand "Open Source", I understand "Free Software", but to be honest, I always thought the "Free and Open Source Software" (FOSS) term is just stupid. We have a local saying: it's like trying to reconcile both the goat and the cabbage.
- jordigh 10y ago
  It's more like trying to reconcile "climate change" and "global warming". Two terms for the same thing with different political slant.
arsenide 10y ago
Do you have evidence that their refusal was due to their views, or is it speculation on your part?
- jordigh 10y ago
  They were quite clear that they did not want to be associated to free software and were very annoyed and unreceptive to the idea. I can't find the exchange now, but it definitely happened. I think it was over email.

the_mitsuhiko 10y ago

You can so the experiment yourself and go to open source projects and ask to go with gpl for future contributions and to put free software into he readme :)

ex_amazon_sde 10y ago
The tone in "Many people" and "go out of their way to make sure" makes it sounds quite different. Almost as if the majority of developers were actively refusing to touch GPL code. I've been working with many developers and I can say with confidence that the large majority has only mild preferences and does not refuse to use or send patches to a project simply due to licensing. Asking people to change license of an existing project is quite demanding and takes more effort that doing nothing which makes it an unfair comparison.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  > Almost as if the majority of developers were actively refusing to touch GPL code. I would say the majority of developers who are writing Open Source code go out of their way to ensure they are not touching GPL code.