Terminology (was: Please review our new charter)

[jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com]

Hows this,
we just quote stallman like this :
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/09/15/rms_why_open_source_needs/


"""The free software movement, since its inception in 1984, has had a
political goal, political in the highest sense of the word. We are
concerned with the question of what kind of society we should live in.
We believe that computer users should have the freedom to share and
change software, and we developed the GNU operating system for that
purpose. (Linux, the kernel that Linus Torvalds wrote, is normally
used together with GNU, in the GNU/Linux combination; see Linux and
the GNU Project.)

The open source movement was founded in 1998 by people who wanted to
talk about our system without mentioning the political ideals that
motivated us to develop it. They got lots of publicity, and as a
result most of the users of our software think it was developed under
the name of open source for apolitical reasons. A recent survey showed
that more developers prefer the affiliation with free software, on
account of our principles, but the users get a misleading picture of
this. That picture contributes to the political weakness in our
community.
"""

So he talks about two movements,
you are saying that they are one. So, I can just define my terms as such :

"""the Free Software and Open Source Association of Kosova ASLH
supports the free software movement
and the open source movement, but prefers the Free software movement
if given a choice.

the Free Software and Open Source Association Kosova ASLH supports the
free software foundations license GPL and GFDL and the open source
licenses that are listed in its pages but prefers the Free software
foundations licenses. Also the licenses from the creative commons are
also supported.

the Organisation will support software and developers of software that
work on the FSF licenses, but also the OSI approved licenses and also
the CC licenses.
"""

I this this is more clear, and it avoids talking about free software
vs open source but talks about the movements and the licenses of them
that is easier to deal with.

What do you think about this?
thanks,

mike


On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 8:40 PM, simo <simo.sorce at xsec.it> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 19:27 +0100, jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Bernhard Reiter <reiter at fsfeurope.org> wrote:
>> > On Dienstag, 3. Februar 2009, list at akfoerster.de wrote:
>> >> > can you give me examples of software that is Free Software but not Open
>> >> > Source or OS but not FS ?
>> >>
>> >> For example Open Watcom is Open Source, but not Free Software.
>> >> http://opensource.org/licenses/sybase.php
>> >
>> > Evaluating which license or other conditions best ensure the four freedoms
>> > is a ever ongoing process (at least because legislation changes from day to
>> > day).
>> >
>> > So there will always be examples where the leading experts are not sure about.
>> > To me the leading experts are the major FSFs, Debian and OSI.
>> > (At least those are the ones putting in significant time evaluating software
>> > and licenses.)
>> >
>> > Step back a few steps and this does not change the overal picture:
>> > There is Free and un-free Software.
>> > Some groups use a different word for Free Software.
>>
>> Well,
>> I see your perspective. And I appreciate your effort in explaining it.
>>
>> I still don't agree, because for me free software is an ethical and
>> political movement that involves moral judgements.
>>
>> Open source is just that, open source.
>> Now I support the free software movement, but I also support the open
>> source people to distance themselves from it.
>>
>> The free software movement makes itself unpopular in places that do
>> not want people to have too much freedom.
>>
>>
>> For example, lets say you spend all your effort, years and years you
>> invested in creating a product and all of a sudden someone figures out
>> how to go around your license and create a plug in that would allow
>> someone to go around the barb wire you strung up, then you would do
>> anything to stop them.
>>
>> I think that you can imagine what I am trying to say,
>> sometimes people don't care about freedom because they need to survive.
>>
>> Now, these people like the idea of open source better,
>> because they have no strings attached and they can choose to hide the
>> source if they need to.
>> This is better than making contradictory licenses that say that you
>> have the freedom to use the software for any purpose but not the right
>> to use in for the purpose of interfacing to a plug in.
>
> I think you have very confused ideas about what is Open Source.
>
> I think you are confusing copyleft with Free Software and non-copyleft
> with Open Source.
>
> You are *wrong*. And you shouldn't embed such completely wrong believes
> in any charter that is binding people to something as it would bind
> people to fantasies.
>
> Free Software encompass all copyleft and non-copyleft licenses just as
> much as Open Source does.
>
> There is *no* practical difference between the licenses that can be said
> to be Open Source or Free Software.
>
> If you want to do justice to the people you are going to address you
> better take Free Software and Open Source as synonyms until you
> understand where the difference lies. You'll do much less damage that
> way.
>
> Simo.
>
>