Talk:Alternative terms for free software

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This article was nominated for deletion on Oct 20 2005. The result of the discussion was No consensus. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

(for discussion on improving this article, see below)

Contents

[edit] Aims of this page

This page aims to be a consolidated page for, you guess it, alternative terms for free software. Current pages for such terms are fairly thin, and go through phases of being biased. This indicates they don't have a significant number of editors caring for them. They also contain a lot of duplicate effort - either in defining free software, or in mentioning eachother, or in mentioning the reason for inventing alternatives to "free".

When I've finished combining the information from those pages, I will suggest merging libre software, FLOSS, and FOSS into this article (by means of redirecting, of course). Ideally, open source software should also be merged into this, but if the maintainers of that page want to continue as a seperate page, that's what'll happen. Help appreciated. Gronky 16:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

This is ridiculous, it's just a duplicate of information already available on other pages and a thinly veiled attempt to push a POV against the term "open source." It's already been decided there will be no merger, stop trying these deceptive attempts to get around that. And POV in articles is not a reason to create a new one, especially not a new POV'ed one. Nathan J. Yoder 16:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
There seems to be a mistake, you're accusing me of things I haven't said. I haven't accused anyone or any article of POV. I've invited people to come and help this article, and in general more eyeballs=less POV (which would foil any plans to "push" anything "against the term 'open source'"). I'm not aware of a previous rejected merger attempt (note that I'm not doubting it happened) can you point me to it? Thanks. Gronky 16:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
You specifically said 'bias', which is another word for POV, don't play games. You can't just merge articles unilaterally. And "more eyeballs = less POV" is dubious, as attracting large numbers of editors can actually lead people who are like minded pushing a POV in full force. The merger tag was removed from the open source software page whens someone tried merging it with open source, so I seriously doubt anyone has agreed to merge it here. Nathan J. Yoder
Ah. So there was not a similar merge suggested and rejected. Someone tried to merge the "open source" article, you say. Look, I have not suggested merging open source or open source software. I have suggested moving the other articles, and if the maintainers of the "open source software" article want to merge in too - that's ok, and if they don't, that's ok too. (as I said above) Also, I've suggested doing nothing unilaterally. I've started this page, I will continue to improve it (if it's not deleted), and I will suggest merging the relevent articles when this page is ready (assuming it gets to that point, which I expect it will). Gronky 17:09, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
The obvious implication of that rejected merge is that they're not going to merge with this one. If they won't even merge with open source, what makes you think they'd merge with this article? Nathan J. Yoder 17:18, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I find it hard to follow you. What was the merge you are talking about? Who won't merge with open source? And what has open source got to do with my suggestions? Did someone propose merging open source software into open source, and this was rejected - is that what you're saying happened? (If you say it happened, I'll believe you, but please clarify)
If that's what you are saying, then I don't see the conflict or connection between that merge and this page. Not only have I not commented on that merge, but I have not made any suggestions regarding the open source page. My aims/suggestions/proposals have been stated above. Gronky 17:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Improving this article

Additions to this list are welcome.

The contents of the "timeline" section should be kept as thin as possible. Put another way, information should be inserted by topic rather than by term. For example: "FLOSS" can be translated into other languages. This information should be in a section about the use of these terms in non-English languages, or about the political correctness of these terms. Gronky 22:24, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Overlap with free software?

I've merged much of the useful material (of which, there was quite a bit) in this article to its main article, free software. (Although, this page wasn't linked to by the latter free software article, until recently, and I've since removed the link). Therefore, this page is probably worth deleting. I'd appreciate if folks could double-check my work to see if there's any more material that should be merged with free software. Then we can move on to proposals to figure out what to do with this page. --65.19.87.53 18:53, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Someone was uncomfortable with all the detail of this page being included in the early sections of free software. I've used the Template:Details at free software to link to this page, and have pared down this page to what doesn't duplicate material at free software. --69.54.6.84 18:37, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Most of these so called alternative terms define broader concepts.

I already explained some of these problems at the free software portal. --Easyas12c 13:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll reply there. Gronky 17:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Licenses" section

The "Licenses" section was deleted, and then the deletion was reverted. I'm interested in avoiding duplication of the free software and free software licenses articles among other places, and keeping this page limited to explaining these alternative terms. I'd like to know what specifically the section on licenses offers us.

Obviously, if the terms introduced in this article are indeed all alternatives to free software, then we could reproduce a lot of the material at free software by replacing the subject of "free software" with the the phrase "the above terms". I'd qualify this sort of activity as unsustainable. --71.241.131.233 23:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The licences section in this article is about how the various terms are linked to various licences, licence criteria, and judges of acceptability. This article is about terminology, and the implications of each term. As such it is as you say it should be: "explaining these alternative terms".
The details and the specific licences should be discussed in free software licences. I'm pressed for time now, but I will come back later and give a better answer and/or partially revert my revert. Gronky 08:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I understand the motivation for the section, linking "terms" with "licenses". Not only does it not accomplish this in its current form, I deleted it because it never would serve such purpose for the reason of subsumption as argued above and because anything the section would try to include would duplicate explanations found in numerous locations, free software, free software licenses, open source vs. free software to name a few.

I'm sorry to hear you're busy, but I'm not going to restore the edits you've overwrote by your revert. It assumes others aren't also busy. --64.223.117.120 06:44, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I expected to be able to come back sooner, but that didn't happen. I'll try make time later this week. Gronky 19:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FOSS

I was unaware of this discussion. Some additional points and, I hope, clarifications:

  • The subsequent nearly one-year delay in the final publication of the report had far more to do with the Washington Post and other entities getting wind of it than it with the completeness of the report as of early 2002. The unexpected attention necessitated both a very thorough internal review and more exploration of licensing options before the report was publicly released by DISA on their main web site in early 2003. And no, to the best of my knowledge the report is not on the DISA site anymore. However, since it was the very first link on their main web as of roughly mid 2003, I'm pretty sure its presence there could be verified easily by someone with archival web access.
  • I was not tracking Amiga Games usenet groups, and was certainly unaware of the above email or of any other similar emails, nor of the acronym F/OSS from any other forum.
  • Given in particular the slight differnce in their forms, my best surmise is that F/OSS and FOSS were simply parallel acronyms developed at about the same time. There is also a very slight chance that the F/OSS usage does somehow trace back by word-of-mouth (or word-of-email) transmission to my acronym from very early 2002. However, the odds of that drop to zero if F/OSS was in use in December 2001, since I had not yet begun working on the report at that time.
  • Regarding one earlier edit of this web page in which someone suggested that FOSS was actually derived from FLOSS, I had never heard of the FLOSS acronym until an early reviewer of my report tried to persuade me to use it in place of FOSS. I rejected the idea, noting that to me the acronym FLOSS just sounded "too dental"... 8^)
  • Whenever I come up with what are (for me) new phrases or acronyms, I normally perform a due-diligence searching for both unwanted collisions and prior use. For FOSS I don't recall getting any matching hits on my search other than some use of Foss as a family name and other non-acronym uses. As evidence of that I take such searches seriously, when I developed the phrase "software cooperatives" to describe a concept and to serve as the title of a paper I did on the economics behind FOSS, my Google searches uncovered an earlier semantically identical use of the phrase by R. McOrmond. Although I had not relied on his work, and indeed had not even been aware of his existence until my paper was nearly done, I added him as the first reference in my paper to acknowledge his prior creation of both the concept and the phrase.
  • Googling now (05:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)) on MITRE FOSS (no quotes) gives 28,600 raw hits, nearly all of which are about the report in which I use the FOSS in the title. From this it would seem reasonable to say that my report did play a bit of a role in popularizing use of the FOSS acronym... 8^)
  • Based on the number of FOSS hits, I suspect that a Wikipedia article is indeed merited. If nothing else, a short article on this term (and also FLOSS) helps clarify the often baffling relationship between free software and open source software.

[edit] Bias/POV fork?

There is some discussion of merging Free and Open Source Software and possibly Free/Libre/Open-Source Software to this page. However, this particular title seems biased toward "free software" rather than "open source software" (this is not, after all, "Alternative terms for open source software"). This is a bit ironic, considering both F/OSS and FLOSS were somewhat intended to take the middle ground. Is there a way we can combine all three articles into a NPOV one? Is there some better title for this article & could the way that it is framed be improved? --Karnesky 03:50, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] libre software

The term "libre software" goes back far before 2000. It was proposed on the gnu.misc.discuss mailing list/newsgroup back in the mid-to-late 1980s. It never caught on broadly, but it's had its advocates since those days (including me). Google groups might have those references somewhere in their newsgroup archives, if someone wanted a tiny research project. Xtifr 20:41, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Freedom software

If it's "free as in freedom," why not call it freedom software? 165.230.129.135 17:38, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested Names Section

The "Suggested names" section badly needs cleanup (and some attention to WP:VERIFY) This sentence particularly seems suspect (emphasis added):

Stallman endorses the terms Free/Libre/Open-Source Software ("FLOSS") and Free and Open Source Software ("F/OSS") to refer to "open source" and "free software" respectively, without necessarily choosing between or dividing the two camps, but he asks people to consider supporting the "free software" camp.

The use of "respectively" makes this claim that Stallman endorses "FLOSS" to refer to "open source" software and "F/OSS" to refer to "free software". It seems more likely that the intent here is to state that Stallman endorses the use of either "FLOSS" or "F/OSS" to refer to the category which includes both "free software" and "open source software". Certainly, that makes more sense with the part of the sentence following "respectively". Cmdicely 17:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested merge in of FLOSS

There was a suggestion on the Talk page of the FLOSS article that FLOSS be merged into this article. Gronky 11:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. There was only one paragraph of non-duplicate content, so I moved it here. I moved the external links that are about software to the free software article, and I moved the external links about events to the free software community article. I also did a bit of a review of this article and removed some duplicate content. Gronky 14:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Libre also = gratis in French? (According to Wiktionary)

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffr.wiktionary.org%2Fwiki%2Flibre&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

ie. One valid synonym of "libre" is "gratuit" which means "gratis".

ie. It seems to have the exact same problem as the English word "free".

--irrevenant [ talk ] 03:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Libre can be a synonym for gratuit only in certain situations. For example, many shops in French speaking countries have a sign outside saying "Entrée libre" - which means that anyone is free to enter, entry is available to everyone. In that sense, "gratuit" is implied, and so is synonymous. (Actually, maybe wiktionary is wrong since shops might not charge, but might have a discriminatory entrance policy.) There is no good English translation for these signs because in English speaking countries, it's taken for granted that anyone can enter a shop - so having a sign indicates there is some strange policy. It's often translated as "Free Entry", but I think it would be better if they said "C'mon in!", or "Welcome to Pierre's". Gronky 10:08, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Got a cite for motivations of FOSS and FLOSS?

The article currently says in the intro that not choosing a side between FS and OSS was one of the motivations for coining FOSS and FLOSS - someone has added a "citation needed" tag. Does anyone know of a reference for this claim? I'm sure it's true, but it does need to be backed up. Gronky 17:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2007-03-14: No "citation needed" tags now

I've removed the uncited statement about not wanting to take sides in the FS vs OSS debate being a motivation for the FOSS and FLOSS terms. I'm pretty sure it's true, but I don't have a cite. The good news is that that was the only remaining "citation needed" tag in the article, so the article is now free from such tags, for now. Gronky 13:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

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