IMO both of these ended up being poor names.
“Open source” can be co-opted to mean any project with public source code even if it’s not open contribution (think SQLite, and many of the projects effectively run by major tech corporations).
“Free software” falls victim to the eternal mixup with freeware, requiring the endless repetition of the “beer vs. speech” analogy.
I personally think “Libre software” is the term that best encapsulates the intended meaning while being unambiguous and not vulnerable to misinterpretation.
FOSS is even worse. Free and Open Source makes it sound like free of charge and see my source code.
It’s also a politically neutered term and an acronym of conflated concepts.
FOSS is… Literally as you described it.
What is there to conflate? It’s pretty obvious.
English language…
Many other languages have different words for each type of free
And yet our professors at university translated “free software” using our word meaning “free of charge”, my ears bled. It should have been libre software from the beginning.
It’s called LIBRE software.
Because its not free as in free beer.
Every time I see this phrase it makes me wonder, if the libre software grants the user a right to redistribute itself wouldn’t that imply that it is both free as in speech and as in beer?
I mean, it may be sold, sure, but it would work more like donation, since you also can get a copy from another user instead.
Lets not forget: Linus Torvalds and the Linux Foundation’s policies don’t actually believe in software freedom. The refusal to upgrade to GPLv3 has directly impacted those who use ChromeOS, Android, and WSL; as well as appliances that use GNU/Linux.
They do not believe in liberation.
(Inb4 someone parrots the “pragmatism” fallacy and proves my point again)
Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman never agreed one another. Their principles are very different, Torvalds is more like a tech boy that is inclined to business in other hand we have Stallman that is more a tech philosopher. I am with Stallman. But both are very important for FOSS community. I equally respect both.
I also respect both I agree (no GNU/Linux user would deny that), but Torvalds has faced little to no mainstream criticism on his hypocritical stance. Take one look at the Linux Foundation’s top board members and see if they represent the Freeworld. Torvalds directly benefits from a lack of political ethos on Free software.
Stallman asks for the name GNU/Linux to be used and gets bullied online (to this day) by ignorant users who refuse to learn the history. Torvalds directly enables the subjugation of others via tivoization and weak copyleft? The “FOSS community” is near silent in comparison. All in the name of pragmatism that has left so many users uneducated and confused.
When Stallman tells us to say “Free software” he does not mean to say “free for me but not for thee (because I have to feed my rhetorical family in this fast-paced economy).” He seeks total liberation.
I am more of a Libre type of guy
Bruce Perens who defined Open Source regrets the outcome.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=vTsc1m78BUk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Don’t have time to watch a full hour video? The definition of his new Coherent Open Source is at https://licenseuse.org. It’s only three licenses: Apache 2.0, LGPL 3 and Affero GPL 3.
