what you (and the article you mention) now talk about is the software, and when it's clear that that's what one talks about, there is indeed some similarity, though even there there are very important distinctions to make, because of fundamental differences in the underlying values and goals that attract people and organizations to prefer one label over the other.

people who think the values and goals are the same are just confused, and it doesn't serve our goals and values to promote that confusion. promoting the conflation of a strict cause with a laxer cause may make you popular with the latter, but it will weaken the strict cause and promote the laxer one instead.

the laxer one tolerates proprietary blobs in Linux, pretending them to be open source; it tolerates tivotized (therefore nonfree) software while recognizing it as open source software; it tolerates scenarios in which programs available under freedom-respecting licenses do one's computing but run under another's control, which renders it nonfree to the only party to whom this matters.

referring anyone to the open source label encourages them to assume all of these very relevant scenarios don't matter. reinforcing the false equivalence makes them believe that not even free software cares about them.

framing it as a less ambitious first step, rather than misrepresenting it as an equivalence, might serve a useful purpose for us, instead of undermining our cause. please don't settle for less than what we stand for.

CC: @amszmidt@mastodon.social @nparafe@mastodon.social @fsfe@mastodon.social @fsf@hostux.social @osi@opensource.org