Movements (was: Terminology (was: Please review our new charter))

[Matthias Kirschner]

* Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at intevation.de> [2009-02-05 11:29:33 +0100]:

> Note on the subject of movements, there is a completely seperate issue:
> The FSFE maintains that there is one movement, though there are at least
> two subgroups one being "Free Software people" and others "Open Source
> people".  In brief our reasons for speaking about one movement are that
> we cannot conquer the word "movement" and that even "Open Source people"
> are not completely politic-agnostic and having and influence on society.
> Scientists usually will understand "social movement" or "cultural
> movement" in a much larger grouping of the topic, so they will most
> likely see one movement. (Here I again prefer the wording "Free Software
> movement".)

Fully agree :)

> Oh, btw, Richard is not the only one that thinks and speaks 
> about Free Software, so quoting him is not authoritative on the whole movement 
> nor on all major FSFs. I believe the FSFE position on this matter has 
> convinced a number of Free Software leaders over the years, including Richard
> (the quote was from 2002 or so).

E.g. here a quote from Richard in one of his latest interviews [1]:

    "Free software" and "open source" are the names of two different
    political viewpoints within the free software community - the
    community built by the free software movement.

I think that is much better than talking about differnent movements.

Best wishes,
Matthias

  1. http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/128513,qa-richard-stallman-founder-of-the-gnu-project-and-the-free-software-foundation.aspx
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