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happy almost-new-year, dclug. 2012-12-28, heb yr Simon Avery:
A fair point and well made, although personally I try to use FOSS to distinguish against "free" which means to most people "Oh, I don't have to pay for it?" and nothing else. That perception won't change.
surely people are not unfamiliar with the term "free speech"? surely they don't think it means free minutes on their cell? the understanding that software *is* speech is far less common, i'll admit. i personally take that as a deficiency in people's scientific education, and one worth correcting at every opportunity.
FOSS is also free, but not all free is FOSS.
interesting. that is not my understanding of those terms. as applied to software, i understand "free" to entail "open source", but not the other way around. (more on my interpretation of "free" below.) furthermore, i understand FOSS to mean "free *and/or* open source", which (given my understanding of its constituent terms) is logically equivalent to simply "open source". consequently, whenever i see FOSS applied to a project, i suspect the project might *not* be a free software project. the current wikipedia page for FOSS suggests i am not alone in this interpretation: from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_Open_Source_Software
FOSS is an inclusive term that covers both free software and open source software, which despite describing similar development models, have differing cultures and philosophies.
as for what it means for software to be free, i think of free software as the project that creates freedom of speech, one text at at time, starting with texts composed in formal languages. i consider the following four-part definition intuitively satisfying as a formal analysis of the motto "free as in speech, not as in beer": from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms: * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
some comments on the above: on f0: running a program is akin to reading a book (even if it's your processor that does the reading). banning books restricts freedom of speech. on f1: this is akin to the freedom to privately criticise and edit a text. it's a pretty poor freedom of speech that keeps you from doing this. also, wrt to access to source: it's not a free-speech world if you, an english speaker (=literate programmer), are only allowed to read shakespeare (=original source) in, say, japanese translation (=binary, for purposes of the analogy). so truly free software is always open source software. on f2: you can't exercise freedom of speech if you can't share a given piece of speech with your neighbor. "oh sure, you've got freedom of speech. read whatever you like. just don't say XYZ to your neighbor, and you'll be in the clear." on f3: "for your public performance of a blasphemous parody of the The Holy Book, we sentence you to..." my two cents, and surely not the last word on the topic. cheers, wes ps: i have been lurking on and learning from the dclug list for a couple of months, and i'd like to thank all of you who post here---askers and answerers alike---for the free, friendly, and expert education i've received so far. On Fri, 28 Dec 2012, Simon Avery wrote:
On 28 December 2012 12:41, Philip Hudson <phil.hudson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:This crystallizes some worries and doubts I have about this and other LUGs I've been involved with:A fair point and well made, although personally I try to use FOSS to distinguish against "free" which means to most people "Oh, I don't have to pay for it?" and nothing else. That perception won't change. FOSS is also free, but not all free is FOSS. As you'll guess by now, I like FOSS (I've released software and source under this, and previously as "Public Domain" when I was coding for Fidonet and DOS in the early and mid 90s. Now I don't generally bother because there are far more, and better, coders and better distribution channels so anything I do will have been done better by somebody else). Surprised yer chap doesn't mention FOSS as a handy acronym - seems ideal to me! What does annoy me more than anything is when "Free" projects try to monetize themselves, or put barriers in the way of freedom by protecting some small but critical part of the code that prevents recompiling, or makes it deliberately obfuscated so nobody else can be bothered to compile. (I site the windows versions of Xchat for this. Free under linux, but successively difficult to build under Windows that the author sells the product). If you want to make money out of software, and I have no objection to that AT ALL, then do it honestly and sell the thing outright where it can stand or fall on its merits. Don't blur the "free" software market with something that's not. This is another reason why I value Debian, that the repo maintainers make a conscious effort to separate what is and what is not, often to levels that might frustrate the user, but ultimately protect them. Unless I deliberately add a non-free repos, I can be totally sure what I install is free and FOSS. I don't ever bother to get the sources and recompile, but it matters to me that I could if I wanted to. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq
-- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq