5 ms·

I appreciate Stallman's views and agree with many of them but I just wish a slightly different word was chosen for the free in "free software". Now you have a s

I appreciate Stallman's views and agree with many of them but I just wish a slightly different word was chosen for the free in "free software". Now you have a situation where you need to correct an understandable misconception for the layperson almost everytime free software comes up.

codelizard42 11y ago
This is one of the reasons people in the Free Software community have been recently shifting away from wording like "free as in freedom", "Free and Open Source Software"/FOSS in favor of the use of the word "libre", "Free and Libre Open Source Software"/FLOSS
- aschampion 11y ago
  Introducing more arbitrary jargon isn't going to make the distinction any more clear to a layperson, but if you do choose a neologism "libre" is just plain awkward.
  - unholythree 11y ago
    I disagree, I think it's better to have a term that requires explanation than a term people will misinterpret. There's an existing connotation of free as $0 that you have to combat, rather than a simple new word/term to define.
  - delecti 11y ago
    I'm not sure calling it a "neologism" is accurate. It's a borrowed word that has a clearer meaning than anything in English. Such a thing is hardly unprecedented in English.
  - superskierpat 11y ago
    This may be because I'm from quebec, but this is perfectly fine for me, its a word that is much more precise, since if the word does not have a proper translation, its a better idea to use the external, but uniquevocal, word.
joesb 11y ago
IMHO, it's cheap practice in any movement. Use a common word with positive meaning in your movement to cause confusion and they try to own the word. It also easier to make your opponent looks bad. Saying a software isn't "free" makes other people feel like the software is bad when, in fact, it's only not their movement's definition of free.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Saying a software isn't "free" makes other people feel like the software is bad Really? I've never seen that, except when the "other people" understand that to mean it doesn't fit the FSF's definition. People who don't know about the FSF's definition would just think it's paid software, not "bad", in my experience. What software are you thinking that is considered "free" (and not in the sense of cost) by some people but doesn't fit the FSF's definition?
adrusi 11y ago
A point that doesn't often get brought up in this discussion is that $0 software was virtually nonexistent at the time of the founding of the free software movement. In the internet's infancy, when software was still delivered on physical media, it made little sense to give software away for free because the shipping and material costs would drive the cost to the user significantly above $0. Not that there wasn't ever software given away for free. There was source code published in magazines for the user to type in and compile for themselves, and there were friendly neighbors who would give you a program that they wrote for free. Even in the earliest years of the internet, people were sending their programs for free over the network. But in a way, free-as-in-speech software predates free-as-in-beer software.
- spc476 11y ago
  Actually, software was free at one point. Given without extra cost with the hardware. The concept of piracy wasn't an issue when the number of computers that could run the software ran in the two or three digits (maybe even four digits worth of computers). Also, without software already existing, those multi-million dollar computers wouldn't be worth the price. This started changing when computers became plentiful enough to sell to a mass market. Bill Gates certainly saw the profit in selling only software (I'm not saying he was the first to do so, but I do suspect he was among the first to do so).
quadrangle 11y ago
Should have been the "Software Freedom Foundation" Software Freedom is a great term, but just works in some grammatical contexts. You can otherwise say "free/libre" or "free/libre/open" or "freedom-respecting"…
loomio 11y ago
Agree completely. I understand the deeper issues and concepts being discussed - because I'm the kind of person that happily takes time out of my weekend to re-read Stallman essays from 2007. However, as a SaaS startup trying to communicate with non-geek end users about our AGPL-licensed FLOSS product, we have found the misunderstandings caused by the term "free" insurmountable. Our choices are to use "open source", which more or less gets it across to lay people completely unaware of the subtleties, use "free software" and then launch into some long-form explanation of why we also charge money (of course anyone can grab the code for free and run their own instance but most of our customers don't care about any of that), or say FLOSS or Libre and it's totally unintelligible to most people and they stop paying attention before we've gotten anywhere. Unfortunately I don't think this problem will be constructively progressed until it evolves past the realm of geeks arguing about it amongst themselves, and actually is approached as a marketing issue. Perhaps the reason the debate is still festering is there hasn't been much alignment of incentives between the marketers and the geeks to work together on it, because most software companies don't try to mutually hold the values of Free Software and commercial profit. But we won't see Free Software and its underpinning values go mainstream until that happens, and I think it would be good for everyone if it did.

codelizard42 11y ago

This is one of the reasons people in the Free Software community have been recently shifting away from wording like "free as in freedom", "Free and Open Source Software"/FOSS in favor of the use of the word "libre", "Free and Libre Open Source Software"/FLOSS

aschampion 11y ago
Introducing more arbitrary jargon isn't going to make the distinction any more clear to a layperson, but if you do choose a neologism "libre" is just plain awkward.
- unholythree 11y ago
  I disagree, I think it's better to have a term that requires explanation than a term people will misinterpret. There's an existing connotation of free as $0 that you have to combat, rather than a simple new word/term to define.
- delecti 11y ago
  I'm not sure calling it a "neologism" is accurate. It's a borrowed word that has a clearer meaning than anything in English. Such a thing is hardly unprecedented in English.
- superskierpat 11y ago
  This may be because I'm from quebec, but this is perfectly fine for me, its a word that is much more precise, since if the word does not have a proper translation, its a better idea to use the external, but uniquevocal, word.

joesb 11y ago

IMHO, it's cheap practice in any movement. Use a common word with positive meaning in your movement to cause confusion and they try to own the word. It also easier to make your opponent looks bad. Saying a software isn't "free" makes other people feel like the software is bad when, in fact, it's only not their movement's definition of free.

icebraining 11y ago
Saying a software isn't "free" makes other people feel like the software is bad Really? I've never seen that, except when the "other people" understand that to mean it doesn't fit the FSF's definition. People who don't know about the FSF's definition would just think it's paid software, not "bad", in my experience. What software are you thinking that is considered "free" (and not in the sense of cost) by some people but doesn't fit the FSF's definition?

adrusi 11y ago

A point that doesn't often get brought up in this discussion is that $0 software was virtually nonexistent at the time of the founding of the free software movement. In the internet's infancy, when software was still delivered on physical media, it made little sense to give software away for free because the shipping and material costs would drive the cost to the user significantly above $0. Not that there wasn't ever software given away for free. There was source code published in magazines for the user to type in and compile for themselves, and there were friendly neighbors who would give you a program that they wrote for free. Even in the earliest years of the internet, people were sending their programs for free over the network. But in a way, free-as-in-speech software predates free-as-in-beer software.

spc476 11y ago
Actually, software was free at one point. Given without extra cost with the hardware. The concept of piracy wasn't an issue when the number of computers that could run the software ran in the two or three digits (maybe even four digits worth of computers). Also, without software already existing, those multi-million dollar computers wouldn't be worth the price. This started changing when computers became plentiful enough to sell to a mass market. Bill Gates certainly saw the profit in selling only software (I'm not saying he was the first to do so, but I do suspect he was among the first to do so).

quadrangle 11y ago

Should have been the "Software Freedom Foundation" Software Freedom is a great term, but just works in some grammatical contexts. You can otherwise say "free/libre" or "free/libre/open" or "freedom-respecting"…

loomio 11y ago

Agree completely. I understand the deeper issues and concepts being discussed - because I'm the kind of person that happily takes time out of my weekend to re-read Stallman essays from 2007. However, as a SaaS startup trying to communicate with non-geek end users about our AGPL-licensed FLOSS product, we have found the misunderstandings caused by the term "free" insurmountable. Our choices are to use "open source", which more or less gets it across to lay people completely unaware of the subtleties, use "free software" and then launch into some long-form explanation of why we also charge money (of course anyone can grab the code for free and run their own instance but most of our customers don't care about any of that), or say FLOSS or Libre and it's totally unintelligible to most people and they stop paying attention before we've gotten anywhere. Unfortunately I don't think this problem will be constructively progressed until it evolves past the realm of geeks arguing about it amongst themselves, and actually is approached as a marketing issue. Perhaps the reason the debate is still festering is there hasn't been much alignment of incentives between the marketers and the geeks to work together on it, because most software companies don't try to mutually hold the values of Free Software and commercial profit. But we won't see Free Software and its underpinning values go mainstream until that happens, and I think it would be good for everyone if it did.