[Argorak]

Let's start with the man himself: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point..... He would call it "open", but not "free".

The point is that the free software movement views things from the end-users perspective: the user is entitled to see and use the source of every binary blob they get delivered and use. That's an important point of the GPL. FOSS is all about freedom for users.

MIT allows the _developer_, who is not necessary the user, to modify the source, build a binary blob and deliver that to users without ever letting them see the source. The freedom from the users perspective is 0, except those that the developer gives them in their terms of service. MIT is all about freedom for developers.

Which one is the "free" your CLA aims for?

The ambiguity problem with using the term "free" is a well-known issue.

[icebraining]

Let's start with the man himself: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point..... He would call it "open", but not "free".

I don't think you understood his essay. He's talking about the differences in philosophy between the two approaches, but he doesn't claim that non-copyleft licenses are non-free. In fact, he says that "Nearly all open source software is free software", and has a page listing MIT, BSD, Apache, etc as Free licenses: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html