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翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Wednesday, 22-May-2024 22:54:41 JST

翠星石

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@webmink Yet another example why "open source" was a terrible idea and its time to go back to talking about freedom.

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翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 23-May-2024 00:53:44 JST

翠星石

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@webmink >That's what I do. That's what everyone I know does.
Sadly every last "open source" supporter I've met has been unable to define it and has never mentioned that it's about freedom.

It's a very nice buzzword (I've sat near someone who was having a conversation about some hardware design was apparently "open source" 7 times in a row, although with no mention as to the license and my senses at the time told me that it was a proprietary one), but sadly, no matter how many times it's repeated, the only point that gets across is that the source code is publicly available (as that is the only natural meaning).

Sadly some people completely believe in advertising and believe that free means zero price and are initially confused on hearing about free software, but as soon as you hammer the point home that free means freedom, not gratis in all of two sentence with a GNUish glint in your eyes, they suddenly understand and never make the same mistake again.

>It is no longer 2001.
Sad I know right?

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Simon Phipps (webmink@meshed.cloud)'s status on Thursday, 23-May-2024 00:53:45 JST

Simon Phipps

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翠星石

@Suiseiseki
That's what I do. That's what everyone I know does. It is no longer 2001.

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翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 23-May-2024 02:17:00 JST

翠星石

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@webmink >George Lakoff explained long ago that the initial linguistic “palette” from which we paint colours the interpretation of all future conceptual metaphors in the conversation – the initial metaphor sets a frame that interprets and thus constrains future discussion.
This point is arguably more applicable against "open source", as native English speakers initially primed to understand that "open source" means "the source code is publicly available" far harder than any assumption that free means gratis.
Pretty much all native English speakers have heard of freedom-giving phrases like "free as a bird", "I'm free", "free climbing" and "free your mind" previously and that previously set frame easily takes over an artificial advertiser frame once dismantled.
When it comes to "open", all English phrases with "open" in them I can think of are limited to open/closed binary states like; "open-minded" (as opposed to closed-minded) and "open the gate" - which is not a great frame to start with.

>As a result, when “free software” is invoked in English by a non-specialist, nuance concerning the liberty of the individual as self-sovereign in software is lost, and subsequent usage tends to be argued within a “price frame” not a “liberty frame”.
When “open source” is invoked in English by a non-specialist, nuance concerning the liberty of the individual as self-sovereign in software is lost, and subsequent usage tends to be argued within a “source-availability or participatory or beta testing or buzzwords for the sake of buzzwords frame” not a “liberty frame”.

Libre is interchangeable with free if you want to stress the point more that it's about liberty, plus there is a few other words in English than mean free - unfettered for example.

>So the dominant argument for at least a decade of the shift of free/open source to dominance was that free software is cheaper, saves money, doesn't require payment for licenses and so on.
The original argument from the beginning of computing was about the free sharing of software as pioneered by many freedom enjoyers, with a definition coming from rms and was always about freedom.
As far as I can tell, the gratis software argument came after both free software and "open source" and has no real relation to them aside from how it turned out that most free software became available gratis due to the ease of sharing it over the internet.

>There's a deep irony to this, as proponents of the Free Software terminology have frequently accused proponents of the alternative phrase “open source” of losing the connection to user liberty. But in fact it does a better job setting the conceptual frame for outsiders to one where interpretation follows “open” to assume a lack of “closed”, the presence of freedoms to manipulate and use the source and the other attributes supposedly only advanced by the earlier phrase!
I only see an irony in open vs closed.

Closed is merely the opposite state to "open" on the same moral level (an open vs a closed gate), so there is no conceptual frame for opposing the evil of proprietary software (or as I call it, proprietary malware) - instead of all the proprietary evils you can conceptualize, all you have is "closed source".

>The unintended conceptual metaphor invoked by “free” poisons whatever framing we apply and we need to consciously evade that effect.
The unintended conceptual metaphor making proprietary software ("closed source") being morally equivalent to "open source" poisons any framing one may apply, but unfortunately I haven't seen any efforts to evade that effect.

>We need to try harder to effectively apply social framing to open source if we are to address the issues we see around sustainability, ethical use and corporate annexation of our movement.
Quite interestingly no corporation has ever managed to annex free software, as you simply cannot twist a message of freedom into something else (they can try saying that their software is gratis, but their goal is for no software to be gratis, with payment to them for use by the minute and so in the rare cases when that happens, it always turns out that the software is not in fact gratis).

What's so awesome about free software is that every free software project that you come across looks too good to be true and then you look closer and it is true - with a masterpiece of a license chosen, with adequate license notices and the finest GNU C.

Meanwhile I cringe when I come across a project that says it's "open source", as I always see links to discord, github, vscode recommendations and a bunch of other proprietary things, with bad license choice, inadequate notices and bad code - half the time I find proprietary software too.

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Simon Phipps (webmink@meshed.cloud)'s status on Thursday, 23-May-2024 02:17:01 JST

Simon Phipps

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