Re: [seul-edu] free software / open source

[Paolo Pumilia <xpol@interfree.it>]

From Odile Bénassy, Mon Dec 17, at  6:26:
 .And be very careful : "open source" happens to be used by bigger
 .software companies to cover their some of their bad commercial practice
 .like using nice people from the developers "community"  to debug their
 .commercial software for free... and still taking all licence advantage
 .to themselves leaving nothing at all to the nice helping "community" guy
 .This is one reason why you would better say "free software"
 .(of course these bad practice cannot be done with "free software") .cf
 .http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html#newinnovember

The relevant part from the reference you have given above has been extracted 
in what follows:

 (...)
  "This manipulative practice would be no less harmful if it were done
   using the term ``free software.'' But companies do not seem to use the
   term ``free software'' that way; perhaps its association with idealism
   makes it seem unsuitable. The term ``open source'' opened the door for
   this"
 (...)

I find this position hardly tenable. 
The word 'free' (as 'freedom'), when no further specification is made, has 
a double infinite of meanings (freedom from what?, freedom to do what?); 
the expression 'free software', could be used by companies and liable to even 
heavier distorsions, if 'open source' would not be available. 
It seems to me that 'open source' make people grasp quickly the main idea in  
our movement, evoking a free (as in freedom) access to knowledge source;
neither 'free software' nor their traslations have the same power.
That is opinionable, i understand. 


What is of my concern here is the demand that 'open source' has no ethical 
foundations.
Many people have had talks, have written articles, have launched projects under
the name of 'open source', since that term was coined. Here are few examples, 
out of the most recent ones:

 http://education.mit.edu/tep/11125/opencourse/ - MIT's OpenCourseWare project
 http://www.mikro.org/Events/OS/text/Eugene-Thacker_OSDNA.htm - Thacker on "Open Source DNA"
 http://www.opencritic.com/texts/CPSR_pattern.htm - McCormick on the Open Source Cultural Database
 http://www.openwebschool.de/basics/whatis_en.html - Openwebschool

Now they should find they were all wrong, according to the orderings of a sort 
of circle of chosen ones. 
This situation threatens to break our community. 
The substatioal equivalence between the two expresions having been questioned by 
one side, I would suggest to use the double expression open source / free software 
each time; talking free softare only would make feel many people left out. 

-- 
Paolo Pumilia