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   翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Sunday, 24-Dec-2023 18:41:16 JST 翠星石

   in reply to

   • mdn
   • Whole Milk 🥛 🐮
   @wholemilk The biggest problem with "FOSS" is that most people will only ever understand it to mean gratis, source-available software, plus most people who understand the intended meaning say free software or libre software instead.
   
   Unfortunately, most people have never been informed that free software exists; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#fs-definition (seemingly mostly out of fear of hurting businessmen's feelings), which is also superset of GNU users who have never heard of GNU: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-users-never-heard-of-gnu.en.html
   
   Many people have heard of "open source" existing, but in 99.95% of cases, the only natural meaning of "the source code is publicly available" is assumed and few people have ever seen the OSD; https://opensource.org/osd (warning; there is proprietary JavaScript on that website).
   
   "FOSS" is a combination of both free software and "open source" software, in an attempt to be neutral and resolve confusion, but it fails to be neutral and makes for a worse confusion.
   
   "FLOSS" ("free, libre and open source software") is neutral and at least may induce someone to punch "libre software" in a search engine, but otherwise it has the same problems as "FOSS".
   
   
   @mangeurdenuage wasn't really making a joke, he was pointing out that rms is not pleased if he's branded as "the father of open source", or "FOSS", as he only does free software.
   • Embed this notice
     Whole Milk 🥛 🐮 (wholemilk@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Sunday, 24-Dec-2023 18:41:18 JST Whole Milk 🥛 🐮

     • mdn

     @mangeurdenuage I understood the difference between FOSS and OSS. I said FOSS initially (which I understand to mean Free and Open Software), and I understand FOSS to be synonymous with Freedom respecting software. Maybe this is inaccurate.