7 ms·

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing

56 points by falava 10y ago

CalChris 10y ago
RMS
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kristianc 10y ago
Can't help but feel that this would carry more weight if RMS did not do his thing or redefining perfectly good words to match his ideology - which I noticed is done here again with 'Service as a Software Substitute'
sverige 10y ago
The perpetual problem of this ideology is that so many people have "wrong" thoughts and speech. I'm surprised only that the list doesn't include a narrower redefinition of "freedom" to mean "free to agree with our definitions."
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  All legal and political discourse is a struggle for control of linguistic territory.
- belorn 10y ago
  You comment would be a bit more relevant if the article actually include a definition for "freedom". You can't create a narrower definition when there is no definition. If you don't like the word, just do a word-replace for "freedom" with "liberty". Liberty has a extremely long history of people trying to define it, and John Locke (1632–1704) once wrote on that subject: freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it: 'A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.' ". And if we talk about liberty, we must acknowledge the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion. FSF focus heavily on the absence of coercion part, like not having patents, proprietary licenses and DRM coercing user and developers of software.
- mhink 10y ago
  I don't really see it as that much of a problem, to tell the truth. Every company with a marketing department worth their salt makes sure to figure out the "correct" terminology to market their product or service in order to present a unified message to the outside world. This is very similar, except the FSF, true to form, is making their terminology (and justification for that terminology) open to the public. The other major difference is that they're not marketing a product or a service, but rather an _idea_, which makes them come off a lot more pretentious than I think they actually are. Okay, scratch that- a _little_ more pretentious than they actually are. ;) But I mean, let's also consider that in the market of ideas, the idea of free software IS, and always has been, under siege by companies who _really don't_ want it to be a Thing. Or at least, companies who have ideas which are only profitable if free software isn't a thing. If you're going to establish an organization whose entire purpose is to keep an idea relevant and un-subverted for a long period of time, it's crucial to come up with practices for "memetic sanitation". I mean, look at U.S. political discourse over the last, say, 30 years. Politicians are experts at this sort of subtle semantic manipulation- repackaging old ideas under new names, giving disparaging/complimentary nicknames to existing ideas they want to reject/promote, or recombining names so that one idea gets mushed up with another in the minds of the public. It's memetic warfare. And so, for the most part, I sympathize with the FSF for doing a hard job. They're playing the game with their cards face-up, and trying to keep their side of the Overton window from getting dragged to a place which they, and I myself, believe will cause the world to become a worse place. tl;dr- if you're not worried about the Green Party's political ideology, you probably don't need to worry about the FSF's political ideology.
legulere 10y ago
I think this is a bit extreme trying to change words to adhere to your own worldview and makes real discussions impossible. There's nothing wrong e.g. with speaking about BSD-like licenses, if you don't see a lack of copyleft as a flaw. This list even kind of reminds me even of Newspeak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak). So let me try to find something similar from a different perspective: Copyleft Free Software: You may not be able to use copyleft licensed code together with code licensed under a different license. Better words are CDDL-proprietary or GPL-proprietary. An example in a sentence: ZFS can't be integrated into Linux because Linux is GPL-proprietary.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  A (very small) few of these are responses to common Newspeak found in the industry. For instance, RMS insists on calling DRM "Digital Restriction Management". .. A much more evocative and accurate title. You don't put DRM on something to make it more open, you put DRM on something to restrict it. The name itself is inherently weaseley, this inversion actually calls it what it accomplishes. Besides, nothing is lost, since the initialism is more common in everyday usage. But a great deal of it is just tiresome pedantry.
- pcl 10y ago
  Yes, RMS's obsession with clever wordplay is really a great example of Newspeak. It's always bothered me, but I hadn't made the connection to 1984 until you said it. This frustrates me, since he's otherwise fighting a good fight, but the rhetoric is marginalizing. A little bit of wordplay is charming, but RMS just takes it so far.
  - Decade 10y ago
    Then what alternative would you propose? The terms of the debate have been defined by totalitarians who themselves use Newspeak to get people to accept their systems. By disrupting the language, RMS makes dissent thinkable.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
ams6110 10y ago
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
Frondo 10y ago
I don't imagine the FSF has really spent a lot of resources on this page, so it isn't really troubling in the sense of "so much effort, what a waste," so it's more of an amusing, "not much effort, but what a waste". Those sorts of language changes happen, and it's just never worth fighting for. Especially hacker vs cracker, that one was lost a long, long time ago. Several of these fit into the same mental territory as genericized trademarks, i.e. digital audio player instead of mp3 player, or Kleenex-brand facial issues instead of Kleenex, again, not worth fighting for. And several of these carry political loading of their own (e.g. don't say "theft"), as well as that perpetual lost cause, GLAMP. Oh well. Happily the FSF does a lot of other good work.
- vizeroth 10y ago
  It's not necessarily that the FSF spends a lot of resources on this page, but that Stallman appears to spend a lot of his time and resources on the issues that are repeated throughout this page (or the whole "Philosophy" section of their website). In some ways, it's good to have someone like Stallman around to remind us that there is another way to look at some of these things, and to push the political debate. One of the biggest issues in my mind is that the GNU camp likes to expropriate words with established meanings, then attempt to categorize everyone else's use of the words as inappropriate. However, that is only a part of the in-fighting which tends to occur between the "free" and "open source" software movements and helps to marginalize them in the eyes of the layman.
- BoorishBears 10y ago
  The problem for me isn't that "this is a waste", for me it's "this is demonstrating embarrassingly pretentious immature behavior that puts the FSF in a very unfavorable light".
KittiHawk 10y ago
"Please don't spread this mistake. People who break security are “crackers.”" No, no, no. "crackers" has its own sordid baggage.
- kefka 10y ago
  Hmm. I've always taken the recent hacker/cracker as the following: Hacker: One who breaks into computer systems or networks one does not control or have access to. Cracker: One who breaks into software and firmware on their devices as to gain control of root over their machines. This may be in contention with the arbitrary licenses they may have agreed to prior to installation or purchase.
  - flyingfsck 10y ago
    I bet kittihawk is talking about the usage of cracker as a derogatory term as it regards to white people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative)
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- dijit 10y ago
  Crackers has been the term for decades. Have you never read the jargon file? http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html
- vacri 10y ago
  'cracker' has been used in this context since at least as far back as my first computer, an Amiga 500. I got a lot of games from a bloke called "Norm the Cracker"...
droopyEyelids 10y ago
This page is a succinct introduction to the important concepts of free-software thought and GNU ideology, regardless of what problems you might have with the actual definitions it supplies. Try and understand the different culture before condemning it all!
- WhatIsDukkha 10y ago
  I agree. It's definitely the worth the time to actually read it. Sadly the title of the page predicts what most people commenting seem to have done - Skimmed, got triggered by a word or a turn of phrase and came to type their first objection really quick.
- amyjess 10y ago
  Honestly, pages like this hurt the free-software movement much more than they help. Someone might randomly stumble on this page and see "oh, supporting the free-software movement means using newspeak" and decide it's a crackpot movement on the same level as Alex Jones.
kefka 10y ago
Nah. I'll keep using Photoshopped, even if it's a name of the ubiquitous image manipulation program. What's my comparison? Yeah, that's been GIMPed. Gimp has meanings other than "Gnu image manipulation program", like talking about handicapped peoples. In the wrong places, saying it's GIMPed can get you in real trouble.
- episteme 10y ago
  I think the implication is that we should say something akin to "the photo has been edited", not just replace the verb with a free alternative to Photoshop.
  - warkdarrior 10y ago
    "Photoshopped" usually implies the photo was edited with the intent to deceive. Regular editing (e.g., removing red eye) is not malicious.
Flimm 10y ago
The very confusing term "free software" isn't on this list, and that fact speaks volumes.
- smu3l 10y ago
  There's a whole page[1] dedicated to defining "free software" in the same Philosophy section. Of course that page also defines the "copyleft" pun which is loaded and confusing on its own. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
dolzenko 10y ago
> The term “WC” has been suggested for a computer running Windows. LOL
BurningFrog 10y ago
Thinking about what words to use is worthwhile for any language user. Obsessing about it at this level, and trying to cram so much meaning into them, is confusing surface with substance. In the end, a word is just a few syllables some people use as shorthand for deeper concepts. It can never be the concept.
verandaguy 10y ago
These are honestly kind of ridiculous, and they come off as unbelievably pretentious. They also lack self-awareness, since they're supposed to avoid being loaded. - As mentioned, verbing "GIMP" can give it at least two loaded meanings which have _nothing_ to do with the image editor. - "Cracker" also has a very, very different and loaded meaning outside of software. And holy heck, the whole GNU slash Linux debate has gotten to the point of mass parody with the "I'd like to interject for a moment" meme. The worst part of it is that it's easy to argue against this point because there are Linux systems out there which don't necessarily use the GNU toolchain. The statement tries extremely hard to generalize the idea that Linux is irreparably crippled without the good graces of the GNU toolchain. Ugh. I want to push for the adoption of free and open source software and hardware, and I really do care about the ability to see the internals of, and tinker with, and break, and then fix the stuff I run in my day-to-day, but this kind of article makes the FOSS community (the free community especially; but the OSS community by extension) look bad by imposing this image of snobbishness and obsession over honestly minute details. The movement to popularize free software and hardware won't be won by making people stop calling digital audio players "MP3 players," when it's an accurate term for an overwhelmingly large part of the digital audio player market.
- dsp1234 10y ago
  While I have no opinion either way, the argument for GNU/Linux is not due to using the GNU toolchain. The argument is that it's the GNU userland and Linux kernel, thus GNU/Linux. There are very few (just android?) distributions that don't use the GNU userland[0]. [0] - https://www.gnu.org/software/software.en.html https://www.gnu.org/software/software.en.html
  - gregmac 10y ago
    Not according to this article: > The operating system in which Linux is used is basically GNU with Linux added. I'm not sure how you lump all distros into a single "operating system". And anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this argument is anyway. Why stop at the GNU userland? An OS with only GNU userland and the kernel would be nearly useless, so there's a lot more to it than that. "Please stop saying GNU/Linux. It's really KDE[1] with some GNU programs and Linux kernel tacked on". "Please stop saying KDE/GNU/Linux; your OS is really just Firefox[1] with some other apps, utilities and a kernel somewhere underneath." [1] Insert your favorite desktop/shell/browser if appropriate.
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
Stallman wants "GLAMP" instead of "LAMP" for the stack, but if someone's already talking about the LAMP stack, how much of the gnu userspace tools are they bringing in anyway.
- amyjess 10y ago
  Yeah, once you're committed to the AMP, the first part doesn't matter. If you ran a LAMP shop, and you told the developers that the company is switching to BAMP (BSD) or IAMP (Illumos), it wouldn't change the code the developers write one iota. Honestly, the important parts are "free as in beer" and "Unix-like" (and you could probably replace "Unix-like" with "command-line driven" and it'd work just as well).
dijit 10y ago
Agree with the Cloud one completely, but then again my laptop is adorned with the "There is no cloud; it's just someone elses computer" sticker so I'm very biased already. When I saw the topic and the URL I was taken back to the coreboot fiasco, and I was sure this was related.. but no, it's just a load of recommendations on changing language that nobody will follow. And mostly there is strong justification for not following, even if GNU/FSF had a huge following. Who on earth wants to replace "Photoshopped" with "GIMPed" or "digitally manipulated", it's not going to win friends with suggestions like this.. even if I see their point.
cguess 10y ago
"The term “creator” as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (“the creator”)." I... don't... know... where... to... start....
- JdeBP 10y ago
  That's because you are not a deity, obviously. (-: You could start with a capital "c" ("the Creator").
lovich 10y ago
A little offtopic, but could someone explain to me what the free software philosophy as espoused by Stallman/GNU is doing that is both good AND separate from the open source movement? Everytime I have seen the differences highlighted, it's been in some condescending article like this from GNU themselves where they are telling everyone how they are thinking wrong. I'd really like to know what the benefit of their philosophy is that isn't shared by the OSS movement
- Decade 10y ago
  Well, there was this last month: https://opensource.com/business/16/11/open-source-not-free-software https://opensource.com/business/16/11/open-source-not-free-s...
br_smartass 10y ago
I'd like to point one thing: ever since I started getting more interested into etymology, I've sort of fallen in love with words, and came to see them as much more alive and powerful than before, and I've started to care much more about their weight, their truthiness, their application, etc, so that I'm precise, and of course I also started getting more annoyed when I see them malapplied. I sometimes think that nothing made me feel smarter and sharper mentally than etymology(like the same effect history, logic, philosophy has, but maybe a little bit more fundamental), the confusing there is not just "this is bad!", if you're using confusing words your thinking gets less clear, lies pass through, making sense of things is harder, more error-prone, etc. When you start to notice things this way, a lot changes. And we sort of have to defend ourselves from the tonnes of bullshit we're shot with everyday. So, yeah, I think this shit is real. Of course changing your vocabulary entirely can feel a bit extreme, but still, KNOWING words are loaded or confusing, or just marketing, or plain lie, plain propaganda, plain politics, is useful. RMS of course cares much more about truthiness than he does what others think of him(and he was right before, remember it?). If one puts 'self-awareness' above 'truthiness' in their mind, it's no wonder they'll think this is weird, eccentric, etc. The cool thing about Truth, though, is that it's way above vanity and opinion. The former scratches the later two, the opposite, not so much or not for very long.
lmkg 10y ago
Let me voice a dissenting opinion: I don't mind this nearly as much as other people do. Entities invested in intellectual property have tried, and largely succeeded, to influence what terms people use to describe intellectual property. They do this because it's an effective way of affecting public opinion, by anchoring certain concepts against other concepts (it's more effective on people who don't have a strong opinion, which for copyright law is the majority of people). It's a common and useful marketing tactic. RMS is observant enough to see this happening, and recognize that it is one of the battlefields of public opinion. He is trying to counter it. And he is doing it in an open and transparent fashion, unlike his opposition, which unfairly opens him up to criticism. The main problem I have is that terminology seems to be the main front where RMS focuses most of his efforts. He spends more time on pedantry and very fine, subtle arguments about distinctions between different types of abstract freedoms. So much that actual messaging becomes a secondary priority, to his detriment.
nougatine 10y ago
Larry Ellison is a software developer? That's news to me. Last time I checked he was the CEO of Oracle.

56 points by falava 10y ago

CalChris 10y ago

RMS

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kristianc 10y ago

Can't help but feel that this would carry more weight if RMS did not do his thing or redefining perfectly good words to match his ideology - which I noticed is done here again with 'Service as a Software Substitute'

sverige 10y ago

The perpetual problem of this ideology is that so many people have "wrong" thoughts and speech. I'm surprised only that the list doesn't include a narrower redefinition of "freedom" to mean "free to agree with our definitions."

anigbrowl 10y ago
All legal and political discourse is a struggle for control of linguistic territory.
belorn 10y ago
You comment would be a bit more relevant if the article actually include a definition for "freedom". You can't create a narrower definition when there is no definition. If you don't like the word, just do a word-replace for "freedom" with "liberty". Liberty has a extremely long history of people trying to define it, and John Locke (1632–1704) once wrote on that subject: freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it: 'A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.' ". And if we talk about liberty, we must acknowledge the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion. FSF focus heavily on the absence of coercion part, like not having patents, proprietary licenses and DRM coercing user and developers of software.
mhink 10y ago
I don't really see it as that much of a problem, to tell the truth. Every company with a marketing department worth their salt makes sure to figure out the "correct" terminology to market their product or service in order to present a unified message to the outside world. This is very similar, except the FSF, true to form, is making their terminology (and justification for that terminology) open to the public. The other major difference is that they're not marketing a product or a service, but rather an _idea_, which makes them come off a lot more pretentious than I think they actually are. Okay, scratch that- a _little_ more pretentious than they actually are. ;) But I mean, let's also consider that in the market of ideas, the idea of free software IS, and always has been, under siege by companies who _really don't_ want it to be a Thing. Or at least, companies who have ideas which are only profitable if free software isn't a thing. If you're going to establish an organization whose entire purpose is to keep an idea relevant and un-subverted for a long period of time, it's crucial to come up with practices for "memetic sanitation". I mean, look at U.S. political discourse over the last, say, 30 years. Politicians are experts at this sort of subtle semantic manipulation- repackaging old ideas under new names, giving disparaging/complimentary nicknames to existing ideas they want to reject/promote, or recombining names so that one idea gets mushed up with another in the minds of the public. It's memetic warfare. And so, for the most part, I sympathize with the FSF for doing a hard job. They're playing the game with their cards face-up, and trying to keep their side of the Overton window from getting dragged to a place which they, and I myself, believe will cause the world to become a worse place. tl;dr- if you're not worried about the Green Party's political ideology, you probably don't need to worry about the FSF's political ideology.

legulere 10y ago

I think this is a bit extreme trying to change words to adhere to your own worldview and makes real discussions impossible. There's nothing wrong e.g. with speaking about BSD-like licenses, if you don't see a lack of copyleft as a flaw. This list even kind of reminds me even of Newspeak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak). So let me try to find something similar from a different perspective: Copyleft Free Software: You may not be able to use copyleft licensed code together with code licensed under a different license. Better words are CDDL-proprietary or GPL-proprietary. An example in a sentence: ZFS can't be integrated into Linux because Linux is GPL-proprietary.

Karunamon 10y ago
A (very small) few of these are responses to common Newspeak found in the industry. For instance, RMS insists on calling DRM "Digital Restriction Management". .. A much more evocative and accurate title. You don't put DRM on something to make it more open, you put DRM on something to restrict it. The name itself is inherently weaseley, this inversion actually calls it what it accomplishes. Besides, nothing is lost, since the initialism is more common in everyday usage. But a great deal of it is just tiresome pedantry.
pcl 10y ago
Yes, RMS's obsession with clever wordplay is really a great example of Newspeak. It's always bothered me, but I hadn't made the connection to 1984 until you said it. This frustrates me, since he's otherwise fighting a good fight, but the rhetoric is marginalizing. A little bit of wordplay is charming, but RMS just takes it so far.
- Decade 10y ago
  Then what alternative would you propose? The terms of the debate have been defined by totalitarians who themselves use Newspeak to get people to accept their systems. By disrupting the language, RMS makes dissent thinkable.
  - Karunamon 10y ago

ams6110 10y ago

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

Frondo 10y ago

I don't imagine the FSF has really spent a lot of resources on this page, so it isn't really troubling in the sense of "so much effort, what a waste," so it's more of an amusing, "not much effort, but what a waste". Those sorts of language changes happen, and it's just never worth fighting for. Especially hacker vs cracker, that one was lost a long, long time ago. Several of these fit into the same mental territory as genericized trademarks, i.e. digital audio player instead of mp3 player, or Kleenex-brand facial issues instead of Kleenex, again, not worth fighting for. And several of these carry political loading of their own (e.g. don't say "theft"), as well as that perpetual lost cause, GLAMP. Oh well. Happily the FSF does a lot of other good work.

vizeroth 10y ago
It's not necessarily that the FSF spends a lot of resources on this page, but that Stallman appears to spend a lot of his time and resources on the issues that are repeated throughout this page (or the whole "Philosophy" section of their website). In some ways, it's good to have someone like Stallman around to remind us that there is another way to look at some of these things, and to push the political debate. One of the biggest issues in my mind is that the GNU camp likes to expropriate words with established meanings, then attempt to categorize everyone else's use of the words as inappropriate. However, that is only a part of the in-fighting which tends to occur between the "free" and "open source" software movements and helps to marginalize them in the eyes of the layman.
BoorishBears 10y ago
The problem for me isn't that "this is a waste", for me it's "this is demonstrating embarrassingly pretentious immature behavior that puts the FSF in a very unfavorable light".

KittiHawk 10y ago

"Please don't spread this mistake. People who break security are “crackers.”" No, no, no. "crackers" has its own sordid baggage.

kefka 10y ago
Hmm. I've always taken the recent hacker/cracker as the following: Hacker: One who breaks into computer systems or networks one does not control or have access to. Cracker: One who breaks into software and firmware on their devices as to gain control of root over their machines. This may be in contention with the arbitrary licenses they may have agreed to prior to installation or purchase.
- flyingfsck 10y ago
  I bet kittihawk is talking about the usage of cracker as a derogatory term as it regards to white people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative)
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
dijit 10y ago
Crackers has been the term for decades. Have you never read the jargon file? http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/cracker.html
vacri 10y ago
'cracker' has been used in this context since at least as far back as my first computer, an Amiga 500. I got a lot of games from a bloke called "Norm the Cracker"...

droopyEyelids 10y ago

This page is a succinct introduction to the important concepts of free-software thought and GNU ideology, regardless of what problems you might have with the actual definitions it supplies. Try and understand the different culture before condemning it all!

WhatIsDukkha 10y ago
I agree. It's definitely the worth the time to actually read it. Sadly the title of the page predicts what most people commenting seem to have done - Skimmed, got triggered by a word or a turn of phrase and came to type their first objection really quick.
amyjess 10y ago
Honestly, pages like this hurt the free-software movement much more than they help. Someone might randomly stumble on this page and see "oh, supporting the free-software movement means using newspeak" and decide it's a crackpot movement on the same level as Alex Jones.

kefka 10y ago

Nah. I'll keep using Photoshopped, even if it's a name of the ubiquitous image manipulation program. What's my comparison? Yeah, that's been GIMPed. Gimp has meanings other than "Gnu image manipulation program", like talking about handicapped peoples. In the wrong places, saying it's GIMPed can get you in real trouble.

episteme 10y ago
I think the implication is that we should say something akin to "the photo has been edited", not just replace the verb with a free alternative to Photoshop.
- warkdarrior 10y ago
  "Photoshopped" usually implies the photo was edited with the intent to deceive. Regular editing (e.g., removing red eye) is not malicious.

Flimm 10y ago

The very confusing term "free software" isn't on this list, and that fact speaks volumes.

smu3l 10y ago
There's a whole page[1] dedicated to defining "free software" in the same Philosophy section. Of course that page also defines the "copyleft" pun which is loaded and confusing on its own. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

dolzenko 10y ago

> The term “WC” has been suggested for a computer running Windows. LOL

BurningFrog 10y ago

Thinking about what words to use is worthwhile for any language user. Obsessing about it at this level, and trying to cram so much meaning into them, is confusing surface with substance. In the end, a word is just a few syllables some people use as shorthand for deeper concepts. It can never be the concept.

verandaguy 10y ago

These are honestly kind of ridiculous, and they come off as unbelievably pretentious. They also lack self-awareness, since they're supposed to avoid being loaded. - As mentioned, verbing "GIMP" can give it at least two loaded meanings which have _nothing_ to do with the image editor. - "Cracker" also has a very, very different and loaded meaning outside of software. And holy heck, the whole GNU slash Linux debate has gotten to the point of mass parody with the "I'd like to interject for a moment" meme. The worst part of it is that it's easy to argue against this point because there are Linux systems out there which don't necessarily use the GNU toolchain. The statement tries extremely hard to generalize the idea that Linux is irreparably crippled without the good graces of the GNU toolchain. Ugh. I want to push for the adoption of free and open source software and hardware, and I really do care about the ability to see the internals of, and tinker with, and break, and then fix the stuff I run in my day-to-day, but this kind of article makes the FOSS community (the free community especially; but the OSS community by extension) look bad by imposing this image of snobbishness and obsession over honestly minute details. The movement to popularize free software and hardware won't be won by making people stop calling digital audio players "MP3 players," when it's an accurate term for an overwhelmingly large part of the digital audio player market.

dsp1234 10y ago
While I have no opinion either way, the argument for GNU/Linux is not due to using the GNU toolchain. The argument is that it's the GNU userland and Linux kernel, thus GNU/Linux. There are very few (just android?) distributions that don't use the GNU userland[0]. [0] - https://www.gnu.org/software/software.en.html https://www.gnu.org/software/software.en.html
- gregmac 10y ago
  Not according to this article: > The operating system in which Linux is used is basically GNU with Linux added. I'm not sure how you lump all distros into a single "operating system". And anyway, I'm not sure what the point of this argument is anyway. Why stop at the GNU userland? An OS with only GNU userland and the kernel would be nearly useless, so there's a lot more to it than that. "Please stop saying GNU/Linux. It's really KDE[1] with some GNU programs and Linux kernel tacked on". "Please stop saying KDE/GNU/Linux; your OS is really just Firefox[1] with some other apps, utilities and a kernel somewhere underneath." [1] Insert your favorite desktop/shell/browser if appropriate.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago

Stallman wants "GLAMP" instead of "LAMP" for the stack, but if someone's already talking about the LAMP stack, how much of the gnu userspace tools are they bringing in anyway.

amyjess 10y ago
Yeah, once you're committed to the AMP, the first part doesn't matter. If you ran a LAMP shop, and you told the developers that the company is switching to BAMP (BSD) or IAMP (Illumos), it wouldn't change the code the developers write one iota. Honestly, the important parts are "free as in beer" and "Unix-like" (and you could probably replace "Unix-like" with "command-line driven" and it'd work just as well).

dijit 10y ago

Agree with the Cloud one completely, but then again my laptop is adorned with the "There is no cloud; it's just someone elses computer" sticker so I'm very biased already. When I saw the topic and the URL I was taken back to the coreboot fiasco, and I was sure this was related.. but no, it's just a load of recommendations on changing language that nobody will follow. And mostly there is strong justification for not following, even if GNU/FSF had a huge following. Who on earth wants to replace "Photoshopped" with "GIMPed" or "digitally manipulated", it's not going to win friends with suggestions like this.. even if I see their point.

cguess 10y ago

"The term “creator” as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (“the creator”)." I... don't... know... where... to... start....

JdeBP 10y ago
That's because you are not a deity, obviously. (-: You could start with a capital "c" ("the Creator").

lovich 10y ago

A little offtopic, but could someone explain to me what the free software philosophy as espoused by Stallman/GNU is doing that is both good AND separate from the open source movement? Everytime I have seen the differences highlighted, it's been in some condescending article like this from GNU themselves where they are telling everyone how they are thinking wrong. I'd really like to know what the benefit of their philosophy is that isn't shared by the OSS movement

Decade 10y ago
Well, there was this last month: https://opensource.com/business/16/11/open-source-not-free-software https://opensource.com/business/16/11/open-source-not-free-s...

br_smartass 10y ago

I'd like to point one thing: ever since I started getting more interested into etymology, I've sort of fallen in love with words, and came to see them as much more alive and powerful than before, and I've started to care much more about their weight, their truthiness, their application, etc, so that I'm precise, and of course I also started getting more annoyed when I see them malapplied. I sometimes think that nothing made me feel smarter and sharper mentally than etymology(like the same effect history, logic, philosophy has, but maybe a little bit more fundamental), the confusing there is not just "this is bad!", if you're using confusing words your thinking gets less clear, lies pass through, making sense of things is harder, more error-prone, etc. When you start to notice things this way, a lot changes. And we sort of have to defend ourselves from the tonnes of bullshit we're shot with everyday. So, yeah, I think this shit is real. Of course changing your vocabulary entirely can feel a bit extreme, but still, KNOWING words are loaded or confusing, or just marketing, or plain lie, plain propaganda, plain politics, is useful. RMS of course cares much more about truthiness than he does what others think of him(and he was right before, remember it?). If one puts 'self-awareness' above 'truthiness' in their mind, it's no wonder they'll think this is weird, eccentric, etc. The cool thing about Truth, though, is that it's way above vanity and opinion. The former scratches the later two, the opposite, not so much or not for very long.

lmkg 10y ago

Let me voice a dissenting opinion: I don't mind this nearly as much as other people do. Entities invested in intellectual property have tried, and largely succeeded, to influence what terms people use to describe intellectual property. They do this because it's an effective way of affecting public opinion, by anchoring certain concepts against other concepts (it's more effective on people who don't have a strong opinion, which for copyright law is the majority of people). It's a common and useful marketing tactic. RMS is observant enough to see this happening, and recognize that it is one of the battlefields of public opinion. He is trying to counter it. And he is doing it in an open and transparent fashion, unlike his opposition, which unfairly opens him up to criticism. The main problem I have is that terminology seems to be the main front where RMS focuses most of his efforts. He spends more time on pedantry and very fine, subtle arguments about distinctions between different types of abstract freedoms. So much that actual messaging becomes a secondary priority, to his detriment.

nougatine 10y ago

Larry Ellison is a software developer? That's news to me. Last time I checked he was the CEO of Oracle.