FAQ for giving lectures about Free Software

[Simon Morris]

On 05/07/06, Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com> wrote:

> > > Open Source is a term that was coined because the term 'free' in English
> > > is ambiguous.
> >
> > Do you have references for that?
>
> http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/free-notfree.php
>
> It might be revisionist; I don't know - but the argument about the
> ambiguity was what I was always aware of.

Another reason why a term other than "free software" is sometimes
needed is that the word freeware is too easily confused with Free
Software and it has very negative connotations.

Just this week I was working with an account director to put a quote
together for some services that included a Free software package to be
deployed. I told her that we need to bill for the hardware but "we can
put a zero cost there because this is provided using Free software"

To sit in the meeting and hear her describe our solution as "luckily
this is a zero cost because it is freeware" was just cringeworthy and
the face our client pulled wasn't very encouraging.

I use the term "Free Software" rather than "Open Source" out of habit
but in this instance I would have been better off using the latter.

Thanks


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