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Same here. I wonder why he did not just use the established acronym "FOSS".

I wonder why he did not just use the established acronym "FOSS".

Near the beginning of the paper he explains that today he prefers the term FLOSS, but that this term had not been coined when he had started writing the paper, so used OSS/FS instead.

Please don't turn this thread into an anti-GPL flamefest. Thanks.

I'm affrid it's to late... Someone will bite on it and then the "party" will get startet. Sadly.

No, not Microsoft.

I think the whole "open source" vs. "free software" debate is starting to get as ridiculous as political correctness. I once co-wrote an article about a particular use of Linux and open source software for a newspaper up here. I tried to explain the whole "free software" / "open source" thing and just ended up wasting about 400 words with a historical/linguistic discussion of the difference between "gratis" and "libre." Incidentally, guess what was first on the editor's chopping block?

Amusingly enough in the course of writing that article, the other person working on it attempted to contact a "free software" figure for a brief interview/a few quotes. The person outright refused to participate if the article used the phrase "open source." Apparently that was more important than the opportunity to talk about his cause in a newspaper read by about ten million people per day.

I won't name names, but the contrarian/jerk in me was tempted to send this person a copy of the article as a Word .DOC after it was published.

Well yeah people generally don't like to be misrepresented.
If you wanted to interview me about sprituality for an article about religion I'd be pretty annoyed.

People also tend to obsess about really minor distinctions between themselves and other groups and place much more importance on those distinctions than is warranted.



The other writer I was working with gave a much more valid analogy about interviewing someone in a rural area called Margaree. He asked the person how long he had lived in Margaree - his quite angry response was "I'm not from Margaree, I'm from North Margaree Harbour!" Despite the fact that you would have needed a map and a microscope to tell the difference, it was apparently terribly crucial.

I can see the humour, and I can also guess who you're talking about, but it depends on your perspective. People outside of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland often refer to the UK as "England," but try getting a Scot to respond civilly to the question "What does it mean to be English in the 21st Century?"

Exactly, I am from Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Part of the UK.
When I am in work, people on the phone call me Irish, but being from the UK I am British.
But
I have a work colleague who lives about 2km from me, he calls himself Irish.

It is swings and roundabouts and it is only in the last few years we all wised up to it....

After the deaths of 3000 of our friends, family and neighbours.

Except British is both wholly accurate and wholly inaccurate in this case. Northern Ireland isn't part of Britain, nor has it ever been - its part of the United Kingdom, except it appears we're missing a term "United Kingdomnian" for people who are British citizens or subjects, but not from the Britain...

Ireland is logically and geographically part of the British Isles. That it is not politically part of "Britain" is just the same as "Canada" not being part of the US, but still being part of North America.

personally i don't like terms like FLOSS, FOSS, OSS/FS,... It just doesn't make sense because at the end "Free Software, "Libre Software" and "Open Source" describe the same kind of software.

People should think about this terms and decide by their own what they want to use. But "trying to be nice to everyone" by using terms like FLOSS doesn't make any sense to me.

Personally i prefer the term "Free Software". The reasons:
- It's the term which was defined first (Free Software beginning of the 80s, Open Source 1998) and i think it's just a matter of respect to follow the term and definition which was the first one and don't hijack a term and/or a movement.
- "Free Software" can mean "free as in freedom" and "free as in gratis" but both are correct uses (think about free speech or free labour) so saying on time what you mean and explain it with the 4 freedoms it is easy to understand and the term "Free Software" matches with the definition through the 4 freedoms. "Open Source" has one clear meaning -> open sources. But this just tells you that the sources are open and not what you can do with the sources and the binary. To make "Open Source" to say what it should you have to build a definition which doesn't fits the normal use of the phrase "open source". This definition has 10 points! I think it's much harder to explain "Open Source" with the complete 10 point definition than "Free Software" with the 4 freedoms and i think it's easier to memorise "Free Software" and the 4 point definition than "Open Source" and the 10 point definition.
- "Free Software" can be translated in every language. So you can talk with people in their own language and in many of this languages "Free Software" is unequivocal.

bottom line: The term "Open Source" doesn't match what the Open Source people want to say. "Free Software" doesn't match what the Free Software people want to say in some languages but also in this languages one of the natural meaning is what the Free Software people want to say. The Free Software definition is shorter and easier to understand than the Open Source definition. So at the end i think "Free Software" is the clearer term. Also it's just a question of respect to follow the language and the definition which was first and this was Free Software.

That's my personal opinion and the rationale behind my decision. I respect also people who decided to use the term "Open Source" (even if i believe that my rationale are stronger than theirs). But i think you should make the decision for you and doesn't enmesh you self in terms like FLOSS, FOSS, OSS/FS,..

Edited 2007-04-15 14:15

Having recently written a lengthy technical spec using a shortening of a product name, only to decide to use the full name at the end of writing it, I can vouch for the fact that "find and replace" will absolutely solve the "issues" he had with changing the terms. Took precisely 5 minutes to change that one and a couple of others and scan through the document to check (as a failsafe.)

I think his point was that he only found out about the term "FLOSS" after he had published the article, and so editing it to replace all instances of "OSS/FS" with "FLOSS" would have caused searches for the former term to break.