Richard Stallman's new article: Overcoming Social Inertia

[David Gerard]

On 31/01/2008, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:

> Over 20 years on and we've still not got a perfect word for what we're
> working to obsolete?


I tend to use "third-party proprietary" when that's what I mean,
commonly just "third-party" (even though free software is third-party
too). I'm a sysadmin at a small media company that uses as much open
source as possible (and I mean for the price and engineering
advantages, so "open source" is the term for what they're after) and
regards third-party proprietary as a headache - for all the reasons
that third-party proprietary software is bad. Third-party FOSS good,
in-house good, third-party proprietary bad.

Humans remake the language every time they speak, and the precise
words are less important than clearly communicating the ideas. Keep
your personal variant of English vital!


- d.