Do you think, if open source never existed, if there were only free software and non-free software, we wouldn't be arguing about whether AI corporations can truly call their free models free?
Companies always seemed much more weary of "free software" as compared to open source. Probably because of the ambiguous meaning of free in English, honestly that is one of the reason we have open source as a concept.
Companies like the flexibility in "open source", even companies who release code as GPL rarely talk about "free software", they are open source companies.
How could we? Free Software makes it clear that when you modify the Free thing and productize it, you have to share the modifications with the public under the same licensing. What's there to argue about? You're either doing that or you're not. If you find a loophole in the text, then the license gets updated, the loophole explicitly closed, and everybody who agrees moves to the new version.
> Free Software licenses and Open source licenses are essentially the same (apart a few odd examples).
Apart from every example of GPL software, which can't be used under the permissive terms of Open Source. The last person I replied to about this used the word "essentially" here, also. Is there a common source slogan for this belief?
Also, somebody should tell all of the people who keep rewriting GPL stuff in order to have an MIT version.
This is a technicality. Non-copyleft licenses can qualify as Free Software because they can be easily relicensed into Free Software (as well as into proprietary software.)
They qualify as Free Software simply because they meet (though do not protect like copyleft) all 4 freedoms. The relicensing is more of a secondary point.
Free is ambiguous term. It might be free in code and price. Or it might be free in price, but closed source. It could be free for me as private person, but not for business.
Is freeware free software? It is rather murky term for me.
That's entirely the fault of the English language. The same term when translated into many other languages (including my first language) creates no such confusion - because they have different words for free as in free beer and free as in free speech.
The point here is that that linguistic peculiarity in just one language doesn't make the word 'free software' invalid or unsuitable, as long as 'free software' is a recognizable term (which it is). This is why FSF makes this explicitly clear with an entire article.
in English, the word "free" has not served well.. suggested alternative "libre" ... oh, except LOSS does not sound great! seems challenging right now.. "free" has failed IMHO .. it is literally mocked by finance people no? every adult in the US and elsewhere must pay bills.. "free" is failing as a label