[okfn-discuss] A Free, Libre and Open Glossary

Thu Jul 11 03:34:26 UTC 2013

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Gene Shackman <eval_gene at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It seems to me there are a number of things going on here.
>
> 1. Apparently there are debates or arguments going on within the
> free/open/libre/gratis community, with lots of groups advocating for their
> own term. So for example, Heath wrote "so much scarred earth lays between
> Open and Free". It would be nice if all these groups can come to agreement,
> but, as a newcomer, I'd ask, how likely is this? (I'm not asking in a
> disparaging manner, it's something I don't know about.)
>
>
This is impossible. The Free Software folks are dogmatic and will not
accept the use of "Open" because of the history of it being used to
downplay the ethical issues. It is in fact the case that "open" is far less
effective at emphasizing the issues of ethics and liberty than "free" if
you already understand free to mean freedom. I am not dogmatic, but there
are enough people who are that we will never see that camp accept the term
"open", and once you understand that there really have been malicious
attempts to undermine the goals of software freedom, you'll have at least
sympathy for the dogma, even if you reject dogmatism in general as I do.

> 2. The second thing is how to get some term the public can understand.
> Personally, I'd vote for "open". When the general public (including me)
> sees free, they likely think, free to use, no charge. Open seems much more
> likely to imply more than that, that some source code may be involved, or
> some coding of some sort. I think it's too long a campaign to get "libre"
> as the standard.
>

"Open" is already damaged goods. It could be revived, but it is indeed very
vague. There are tons of products claiming to be "open" while not meeting
the definition put forth by OKFN or others. "Open" is like "natural" in
terms of food. It is too vague. Plus, the Free Software folks won't accept
it. It still makes some sense if done right.

If you are right that "libre" on its own isn't going to be successful, then
the only answer I see is to embrace FLO as an acronym. That's my focus as I
think it is the most practical and realistic. It creates a wide net to
embrace all these camps while still emphasizing that it needs the full
libre part and all the ethics etc. (because if you didn't care about that,
you'd just say "open").

>
> 3. The third thing is the "so what" factor. I'm presuming that most
> people, outside of the free/open/libre community, won't really be
> interested in whether something is "free" or "open" or "libre" or "gratis"
> or ... well, you get the idea. Mostly they will want to know, does it cost
> anything for them to use. If not, that's all they want to know. Perhaps it
> would be nice to educate the public a little, just that something is 'free
> to use, no charge' vs 'free to use, modify, share'. But I don't know
> whether more than that would be useful for the public.
>

Dealing with apathy is always complex, but lots of people are not wanting
to be apathetic. People don;'t want to care about semantics and
terminology. People *do* care about being able to share and modify things,
especially given all sorts of real-world contexts like educational uses of
materials and technology or scientific developments or just users wanting
to do certain things on their computers or musicians wanting to create new
variations of songs etc. There's all sorts of reasons for people to care.

>
> Check the top of this page for my small contribution to public education.
> http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods/soft.html
>
> Gene
>
>
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