* Martin <smar...@disroot.org> [2021-03-30 11:07]: > On 3/29/21 12:26 PM, Jean Louis wrote: > > * Martin<smar...@disroot.org> [2021-03-29 13:57]: > > From the paragraph above, I can see you did not get the difference > > between the free software and open source. And your analogy is not > > right. You mentioned price not freedom. > I know that gnu definition and in general I'm on your site here, but > unfortunately besides us and other small groups of geeks the "free software" > term just sounds too general in my opinion.
To me not. I also speak German, Freie Software does not sound ambiguous, I speak Italian, software libero does not sound ambiguous, I believe it is same in Spanish, those are large countries with a lot of population and free software movement is present there. In my opinion "free software" is so much more specific than "open source", but you have different opinion. Note that the word "free" in English in the first place in every dictionary refers to freedom rather than price. > People in supermarkets while choosing some free stuffs in promotions > usually are not thinking about freedom. Besides freeware software > like Facebook (with all its network, cloud services, etc) gives you > also some kind of freedom of socializing with other ppl in their > platform. I do not think that Facebook is freeware software, it is cloud service provider. There are Facebook applications and messengers, maybe you mean those? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware Look, even a prison gives you some kind of a freedom to sit in the cell and associate with other prisoners, within specific boundaries. So the freedom in Facebook is there, it is just within prison walls. For example, if you wish to get contacted by somebody who is not FB-prisoner, you must invite free citizen to become FB-prisoner to enter prison walls, as only from inside you can talk to each other. By contrast, if you have a phone number anywhere in the world issued by any phone provider, people can call you from other countries regardless which network provider they have. A citizen of United States may be called freely from Germany, regardless of their network providers. You cannot become member of Reddit and be able to contact Facebook members directly. Those are network providers who do not cooperate between each others as they earn money by selling your face and your private information to advertising companies. They do not want, or so they think, to dilute their customer base and connect with other networks. Back in past, it was possible, and I remember doing so. I have been using Jabber network and I could freely contact Google Plus users through Jabber network and I could freely contact Facebook users through Jabber/XMPP network. It was possible to send email to Facebook friend without being Facebook user or having Facebook account, they would answer in their inbox to such email, and you would get reply. Today it is not possible. Walls are narrower and narrower. You Facebook friends have their contact information, but you cannot easily export that contact information, find their email address or similar, Facebook made it hard. They are master trader of human emotions. They blackmail you as Facebook used (not user), with emotions of loss of contacts to your friends and family. That in itself is such terrible social injustice and oppression. Simple rules: 1. Keep your address book on your own computer or phone. Export it and make regular backups. This way you will never trust third party company and come into situation of losing contacts to your friends and family like it is case with Facebook useds. 2. Never upload your address book to remote offline providers. Think about it this way, if a total stranger come over to you and asks you to give to stranger your address book, would you give it? Most probably the answer is NO. But you can at least see the stranger face to face, there is possibility of actual human talk with stranger, you could ask why you need my address book, and you could find out where stranger lives, what is his number, and so on. With Google, Facebook, do you know anybody at least face to face? They have hundreds of thousands of staff members, many being corrupted. What you think what can happen with your data? > In general Facebook is not only about price, they control almost > every aspect of human lives around the globe including people who > are not using their apps directly. Some random person by just > reading the gnu header that "free software is better than > open-source" could easily misinterpret it as Facebook being not so > bad only because it's not open-source. I get it, that is how you misinterpreted it. Well, Facebook is not free software, it is online service, and social network. Applications made by Facebook are free software. > We use the word "free software" to clearly refer to freedom, we may > use words such as libre software to refer to freedom. Libre is just > more blurred Spanish, french,... translation of the word "free" > redefined by GNU. Yes, it is of Latin origin. Many English words are of Latin origin, just as they are of German and other languages. You are free to introduce any new words into English or any other language. Why not? Is there a law forbidding that? Languages are changing throughout the centuries, the word "Libre" is today English word and it has its special definition for software. Please see on Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/libre Adjective libre (not comparable) - (obsolete, rare) Especially of the will: free, independent, unconstrained. - (software) With very few limitations on distribution or the right to access the source code to create improved versions, but not necessarily free of charge. [from late 20th c.] - (historical) Not enslaved (of a black person in a French- or Spanish-colonized area, especially New Orleans). > So the core issue with this confusing term is still not resolved. It is just matter of time, that you are here, it will be clarified all one by one. > We do not use "open source" as that is vague term, and does not > > necessarily mean "free software". The distinction is more and more > > important today. Ironically the word "free" is much more vague then > "open-source". Maybe to you, but not to me. The word has in its first definitions in every dictionary the meaning related to freedom, so please try to verify it: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/free https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/free https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/free https://www.dictionary.com/browse/free?s=t As you can see there are many definitions for a single word. Literacy level is increased when a person understands that any word may have multiple definitions. How do you know which definition applies? It is very simple, you look at the context. Because in GNU Free Software Philosophy RMS and other people always expressed very good the context of freedom, it should be very clear which definition of the word "free" is used, and that it is related to freedom, not price. > The problem I mentioned above is that "free software" unfortunately > could also mean freeware for too many people who are not > professional English linguists nor IT specialists. That is right, for people on lower literacy level it can mean anything, including "freeze". For children it may mean just nothing. The word "free" is definitely one of most common words in English. As I said, if there is any confusion, that means person did not verify the context where word is used. I don't think that articles, books, websites, should be corrected to accommodated those who do not know how to read and understand contexts. In other words, there is nothing to be done for those who do not put effort to understand the context. We can just hope that with their in future better education they will one day be able to understand the true meaning of it. For me, I had never that problem, this may be because I have purchased the first book about GNU tools in German language, and from there on I was reading unambiguous term "Freie Software" and in the context that was talking about the freedom. I did read the GNU GPL license, in full, back in time in 1999, and I was happy to find out that I am free and not in chains. But it is interesting that before I got the book, and before I could read the license is that all what I understood about GNU is that it is another type of UNIX. Though it was advertised on the set of CD-ROMs, that GNU is Not Unix -- I was thinking GNU is Unix. I could read something about licenses, but my software activities were disgruntled with proprietary licenses back in Germany, that I did not want to bother with yet another one. In fact, I did not know that free software licenses exist at all. All what I knew is that by using licenses the proprietors limited us to share software, and I hated the fact that I had to consider me as doing something illegal. In southern part of Europe we did not care of any licenses, and we could freely share and purchase software how we wish and want. It was Warez or cracked software, and same activities of sharing software without respect to licenses is carried on in many countries where practical enforcement's are almost impossible. In East Africa people do what they want, I think almost nobody buys original software, all software that 99.99% population use is distributed without respect to any license. By reading the book about various GNU/Linux tools, I could read about "Freie Software" in German language and there was no ambiguity. > Moreover definition of "free software" is not mentioning about importance of > https://reproducible-builds.org/ nor http://bootstrappable.org/ which should > be in the highest priority for any RMS/FSF/GNU/Free organization to finally > address pathological issues like: > https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2007-11/msg00091.html Reproducible build of software is not related to class of software. While it does seem important, it is more hypothetical rather than practical. End user usually does not have enough knowledge to verify software, regardless of all the PGP keys and hashes. Verification is more for group of people skilled in security. Even they will make grave mistakes. For example they could be downloading software from a mirror and verify PGP signatures and hashes that have been published on a mirror, but would not maybe verify original PGP signatures and original hashes. Some people may be tricked with domain names. Reproducible builds are far far from practical users' data security. Guix is doing well in that direction. All that is not related to free software definition. I agree that software should be boostrappable from software that one can understand and inspect. But that is for many software today not so. Example is Haskell compiler that can only be compiled with previous Haskell compiler. I have tried my best to compile it fully from original source, but pieces of information are missing and it was not practically possible, and now after few years, I think it is impossible. Yes, GNU Guix has solution to fully bootstrap system, it will come there, if it is not yet there, and I hope that solution will be useful for other distributions. Bootstrapping does not belong into definition of free software. But what cannot be said to be free software is a compiler that cannot be compiled or bootstrapped itself. Again, practically, the bootstrapping technique means something only to people skilled in security, it means little to end users. I just hope that we get boostrappable systems. -- Jean Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns