It is the FSF's opinion that "open source" misses the point, and it's pretty self-serving for them to have that opinion, because they don't control the term .
The OSI has in recent years been an ardent defender of free software principles, holding fast to the Debian Free Software Guidelines despite corporate pressure to approve various licenses where the source is technically open but fundamental freedoms are gone.
And, importantly, these corporate interests care about labeling their software as "open source" but not about labeling it as "free software." The FSF would say these licenses aren't "free software," but the corporate interests don't want people to think about fundamental freedoms anyway, so they wouldn't mind. It's therefore very important that someone is out there saying that you can't be "open source" either without the fundamental freedoms, and the OSI has been doing exactly that.
The fact that the FSF does not recognize what the OSI is doing for free software and sticks by an essay from roughly 20 years ago consisting of their opinions about users of the term "open source" is evidence of the FSF's continuing leadership failure - the FSF has been completely irrelevant in the discussions about the SSPL etc., which are among the biggest practical threats to free software today, and not only do they not realize that there's a job to be done, they don't realize who's been doing it, either.
But even that decade-old essay has a very clear footnote:
> Lakhani and Wolf's paper on the motivation of free software developers says that a considerable fraction are motivated by the view that software should be free. This is despite the fact that they surveyed the developers on SourceForge, a site that does not support the view that this is an ethical issue.
That is, a lot of people believe in the ethical imperative that the FSF calls "free software," even if they don't themselves phrase it in a way that the FSF approves of.
> but the corporate interests don't want people to think about fundamental freedoms anyway, so they wouldn't mind. It's therefore very important that someone is out there saying that you can't be "open source" either without the fundamental freedoms, and the OSI has been doing exactly that.
The community should force the companies to do what we want, not what the companies prefer. We want that free software be called "free", because it makes people think about freedom. The OSI decided that what companies want is more important and most people now do not know about their freedoms.
In my opinion, FSF and Stallman are doing that by promoting the free software principles, sharing articles like I linked above. We probably need EFF to join this effort, too.
The OSI has in recent years been an ardent defender of free software principles, holding fast to the Debian Free Software Guidelines despite corporate pressure to approve various licenses where the source is technically open but fundamental freedoms are gone.
And, importantly, these corporate interests care about labeling their software as "open source" but not about labeling it as "free software." The FSF would say these licenses aren't "free software," but the corporate interests don't want people to think about fundamental freedoms anyway, so they wouldn't mind. It's therefore very important that someone is out there saying that you can't be "open source" either without the fundamental freedoms, and the OSI has been doing exactly that.
The fact that the FSF does not recognize what the OSI is doing for free software and sticks by an essay from roughly 20 years ago consisting of their opinions about users of the term "open source" is evidence of the FSF's continuing leadership failure - the FSF has been completely irrelevant in the discussions about the SSPL etc., which are among the biggest practical threats to free software today, and not only do they not realize that there's a job to be done, they don't realize who's been doing it, either.
But even that decade-old essay has a very clear footnote:
> Lakhani and Wolf's paper on the motivation of free software developers says that a considerable fraction are motivated by the view that software should be free. This is despite the fact that they surveyed the developers on SourceForge, a site that does not support the view that this is an ethical issue.
That is, a lot of people believe in the ethical imperative that the FSF calls "free software," even if they don't themselves phrase it in a way that the FSF approves of.