5 ms·

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 spea

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
    Is this using the RMS definition of "totalitarian", which makes moral judgements on the great evil of not releasing the source code to your software on very specific terms, or the one used by most of the world in reference to government institutions? Much of this is GNU virtue signaling. And it comes off as very pretentious and off putting. Example: nobody is ever going to use "SaaSS", because the replacement term conveys no extra meaning to someone who's not in the GNU in-group. For the same reason everyone says "Linux" and not "GNU/Linux". Or the idea that "Photoshop" should be avoided only because it's a "proprietary" name and no other reason. One can imagine the speaker spitting the p-word as if an epithet. The "hacker"/"cracker" boat sailed decades ago. "Trusted computing" as another epithet ignores that such systems can be engineered to work for, or against the user. If you control your own keys, you're ensuring that the computer works in your interests and not the interests of the guy that wrote the malware that just arrived over the NIC. Most of these re-definitions make the mistake of presuming that human communication is optimized for complete logical/ideological correctness rather than efficiency of communication or many other purposes. Imagine if every TCP packet contained a 1 meg checksum. You've ensured that the receiver got exactly what you sent, but it took ages and a lot of almost-certainly-unnecesary noise to get it across.
    - Decade 10y ago
      Trying to avoid the weeds that so many other people have argued, so: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” - Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and former CEO of Google.
      - Karunamon 10y ago
        And your point is...?
        Decade 10y ago
        You do not win the culture wars by using words defined by totalitarians. People who have no respect for others’ freedoms.
Flimm 10y ago
You have to admit that they are not trying to change the meaning of most of the words on the list, they just want to avoid using them.
- edoceo 10y ago
  Just like Newspeak, where words were removed. Can't say "bad" must use "ungood".
31h 10y ago
I think this is a bit extreme trying to change words to adhere to your own worldview Not really, considering that the "meanings" of words in everyday usage have already been deliberately reconstructed and promulgated by the billion-dollar PR engines of the tech industry. For example, how does the word "theft" possibly apply to a person sitting minding his own business on his own computer? It doesn't, so don't use it that way. Which concepts you lump together under a single word, and which you split between different words, is important and also highly subjective - or transjective if you will (shared reality) - but it's a fallacy to think the delineation of concepts is an "objective" distinction. For certain entrenched powers, it's useful to lump together carjackers with music downloaders into a single category ("thieves"). Others find it useful to distinguish, and avoid using the same word. Similarly, some find it useful to distinguish between licenses which are promote freedom, vs those which encumber freedom - rather than using a blanket term "BSD-like" that includes both.

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
  Is this using the RMS definition of "totalitarian", which makes moral judgements on the great evil of not releasing the source code to your software on very specific terms, or the one used by most of the world in reference to government institutions? Much of this is GNU virtue signaling. And it comes off as very pretentious and off putting. Example: nobody is ever going to use "SaaSS", because the replacement term conveys no extra meaning to someone who's not in the GNU in-group. For the same reason everyone says "Linux" and not "GNU/Linux". Or the idea that "Photoshop" should be avoided only because it's a "proprietary" name and no other reason. One can imagine the speaker spitting the p-word as if an epithet. The "hacker"/"cracker" boat sailed decades ago. "Trusted computing" as another epithet ignores that such systems can be engineered to work for, or against the user. If you control your own keys, you're ensuring that the computer works in your interests and not the interests of the guy that wrote the malware that just arrived over the NIC. Most of these re-definitions make the mistake of presuming that human communication is optimized for complete logical/ideological correctness rather than efficiency of communication or many other purposes. Imagine if every TCP packet contained a 1 meg checksum. You've ensured that the receiver got exactly what you sent, but it took ages and a lot of almost-certainly-unnecesary noise to get it across.
  - Decade 10y ago
    Trying to avoid the weeds that so many other people have argued, so: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” - Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and former CEO of Google.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      And your point is...?
      - Decade 10y ago
        You do not win the culture wars by using words defined by totalitarians. People who have no respect for others’ freedoms.

Flimm 10y ago

You have to admit that they are not trying to change the meaning of most of the words on the list, they just want to avoid using them.

edoceo 10y ago
Just like Newspeak, where words were removed. Can't say "bad" must use "ungood".

31h 10y ago

I think this is a bit extreme trying to change words to adhere to your own worldview Not really, considering that the "meanings" of words in everyday usage have already been deliberately reconstructed and promulgated by the billion-dollar PR engines of the tech industry. For example, how does the word "theft" possibly apply to a person sitting minding his own business on his own computer? It doesn't, so don't use it that way. Which concepts you lump together under a single word, and which you split between different words, is important and also highly subjective - or transjective if you will (shared reality) - but it's a fallacy to think the delineation of concepts is an "objective" distinction. For certain entrenched powers, it's useful to lump together carjackers with music downloaders into a single category ("thieves"). Others find it useful to distinguish, and avoid using the same word. Similarly, some find it useful to distinguish between licenses which are promote freedom, vs those which encumber freedom - rather than using a blanket term "BSD-like" that includes both.