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Reading Stallman these days always gives me such mixed feelings. I appreciate the fuck out of all the work he's done for the software community, and admire his courage and willingness to stand out. Overall, I think his agenda to keep the power of computing available to everybody is extremely important. Now more than ever, with computers everywhere and internet of things seemingly just over the horizon. But these terminological squabbles seem to me like the worst kind of bikeshedding. Open source may have began as a way to depoliticize free software, but the battle has ended and "open source" has won. People who are not advanced computer users have never heard of "Free Software," the FSF, GNU, or Richard Stallman. On the other hand, "open source" software has some name recognition among folks like, say, my mother. Young developers (such as myself), have discovered Free Software through an original interest in "open source." With that in mind, I think it would make sense to just use the terminology people are comfortable with, and continue making the same distinction by promoting "ethical open source" or "permissive open source" or something like that. If the worry really is that the language around open source is everywhere scrubbed of the original free software ethos (I'm not too sure about that), a sensible move would be counter that by staking out a corner of "open source" and using it to promote ethical software. Chastising people for the way they speak just sows hostility among potential friends. Stallman always talks about the importance of language, and Orwell's shadow is clearly visible over these rants. But "open source" isn't euphamistic doublespeak - it's not inherently more difficult to think about ethical software when you call it open source instead of free. From an outside perspective, the only difference is that "free software" has a confusing double meaning that "open source" doesn't. Free software (or whatever) already is fighting a battle for relevance. Why choose an uphill battle? FOOTNOTE: The fact that Stallman's pet terminology is always linked to his personal organizations also damages his credibility. It makes it easy to dismiss him as sour grapes. I personally think he deserves recognition, but then again, there's no shortage of software named after GNU... |