On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Kevin "Yeaux"
Dupuy
It's a waste of time. Who cares? Seriously. Who cares? A few people who are extremely radical for "free software" may, but they are outnumbered by the amount of people, even community members who really don't care.
and
First: the only difference that I can tell between "free software" and "open source" is that "free software" is a philosophy and "open source" is a technical description. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not into selling people into philosophies when it comes to computer software. I save that for my other job at a political organization.
It's not that way. If you are an open source enthusiast, you are not our enemy but a person close to free software movement. Because "Nearly all open source software is free software; the two terms describe almost the same category of software. But they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the free software movement, however, non-free software is a social problem, and moving to free software is the solution."(RMS). It is just that you do not understand the ideology behind the software you use. You know why we prefer openoffice over other non-free software even if it is technically might not be superior? That's because they value the philosophy of free software and open source. So you see without the strength of philosophy, both free software and open source movement is bound to fail. It's not all that technical, my friend. And we do not tell you to sell philosophy but we ask you to develop software maintaing the philosophy of free software and sell it as any other product if you like. Making users aware of their rights is a different issue and that must be done through conferences, news paper articles, working with human rights groups etc. making your potential buyer aware of free software philosophy is a welcome thing but it is more important for developers to be aware of it first. It's sad that you don't care about it like many people don't care about pollution, global warming, hunting of animals etc.
It's Linux. It's going to be that way, changing it to GNU/Linux has never worked, and there's no reason in wasting time correcting people about GNU/Linux, especially when we've got so many people spelling "openSUSE" wrong.
and
Second: it's not about scaring people away because of the name, it's about wasting time worrying about this. --
"It's pollution everywhere, it's going to be that way. Trying to make the world pollution free has never worked. And there's no reason in wasting time to make people aware about the ill effects of polution and encourage them to use things that dont pollute. Especially when we still lack industrial growths in so many countries." and "It's not about scaring people with speeches against pollution but it's about wasting time worrying about this" It looks similar to me. Why I say it is as bad as pollution? "The main argument for the term “open source software” is that “free software” makes some people uneasy. That's true: talking about freedom, about ethical issues, about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might rather ignore. This can trigger discomfort, and some people may reject the idea for that. It does not follow that society would be better off if we stop talking about these things. Years ago, free software developers noticed this discomfort reaction, and some started exploring an approach for avoiding it. They figured that by keeping quiet about ethics and freedom, and talking only about the immediate practical benefits of certain free software, they might be able to “sell” the software more effectively to certain users, especially business. The term “open source” is offered as a way of doing more of this—a way to be “more acceptable to business.” The views and values of the Open Source movement stem from this decision. This approach has proved effective, in its own terms. Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn't all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step. Sooner or later these users will be invited to switch back to proprietary software for some practical advantage. Countless companies seek to offer such temptation, and why would users decline? Only if they have learned to value the freedom free software gives them, for its own sake. It is up to us to spread this idea—and in order to do that, we have to talk about freedom. A certain amount of the “keep quiet” approach to business can be useful for the community, but we must have plenty of freedom talk too. At present, we have plenty of “keep quiet”, but not enough freedom talk. Most people involved with free software say little about freedom—usually because they seek to be “more acceptable to business.” Software distributors especially show this pattern. Some GNU/Linux operating system distributions add proprietary packages to the basic free system, and they invite users to consider this an advantage, rather than a step backwards from freedom. We are failing to keep up with the influx of free software users, failing to teach people about freedom and our community as fast as they enter it. This is why non-free software (which Qt was when it first became popular), and partially non-free operating system distributions, find such fertile ground. To stop using the word “free” now would be a mistake; we need more, not less, talk about freedom. If those using the term “open source” draw more users into our community, that is a contribution, but the rest of us will have to work even harder to bring the issue of freedom to those users' attention. We have to say, “It's free software and it gives you freedom!”—more and louder than ever before."(RMS) read the full article at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html -ADM -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org