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Terminology wars: "open source" vs. "free software"

Posted by dave on · 2 comments
Mailing list; By "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> 		Mail this story
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Recently I've had several inquiries about who uses the terms "open source" and "free software", and with what frequency. I never like to speculate when I can collect facts, so I went looking with a search engine.

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Comments (2)

sbergman27 ·
RMS's fight for the use of the "Free Software" term is a losing battle. This has nothing to do with the ideals of "Free Software" vs "Open Source" and everything to do with the fact that is is a horribly ambiguous term. Worse than that, the intended meaning is totally lost on most people unless you explain it to them. When most people hear the term "Free Software" they think "free lunch", not freedom. And to make matters worse, everyone knows that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and besides, you get what you pay for, right? So the common meaning of "Free Software" has negative connotations. This wouldn't be quite so bad if there were some similar term that avoided the ambiguity and, at the same time, didn't sound stilted. I don't think there are any. "Libre Software" sounds awfully stilted, and the meaning is not obvious. "Freedom Software" just sounds too retarded to use in mixed company, almost like some GOP PR initiative. "Free (as in speech) Software" sounds pretty stilted, and to compound matters, "speech" is one of the most misspelled words on the internet, in the same class as the lose/loose, lost/loosed, losing/loosing family of (admittedly amusing) misspellings. (Before the internet, I knew how to spell it, but these days I have to catch myself when I start to type "free speach".)

On the other hand, "Open Source" rolls off the tongue nicely, sounds positive, doesn't sound stilted, is usually spelled correctly, and actually invites questions as to what it actually means. And if you are going to have to explain yourself anyway, well, why not start off with the less confusing (and more intriguing) term?

I really think that RMS is beating a dead horse on this matter.

Then again, maybe it's just that I'm not enough of a fanatic. I call my servers "Linux Boxes" and not "GNU/Linux Systems", after all.

(LiGnuX? ROTFLMAO! But that's just me... ;-)

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Void_Main ·
I disagree. I believe the term "Free Software" (I always try and use an upper case "F" when meaning Freedom) it the most accurate and proper one. Yes, many people get it wrong and it has to be explained to them. I think in the process of the explanation a lot more learning takes place than would otherwise happen. I don't believe there are too many people out there who still confuse the operating system sold by Microsoft with the glass things they look out of in their homes. Eventually people will become educated.

"Open Source" and "Free Software" are not the same thing. Free Software is a form of Open Source but Open Source is not necessarily Free Software. I believe when freedom is the intended meaning then upper case "F" should be used and when no cost is the intention then lower case "f" should be used. Of course I also usually write it "Free (as in Freedom) software" when writing to someone who I think might take it the wrong way. I believe the concept is important enough to put in the extra clarifying words.

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