RE: RE: About the article

["Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

HI Gees,

I got it, you and some other people refer for the Word "free" from a debian
definition perspective. But it remains that the word "free" could be wrongly
interpreted (from your point of view) with something like "free" of charge.

In North America (where I am living) "freeware" carries a "free of charge"
connotation. "Open source" wasn't necessarily a word coming from the "suits"
world but from people who wanted to be more clear about the fact that the
source code is available.

Sorry for my message having several typos and badly constructed sentences. I
was too tired to notice these mistakes caused by my own idiosyncrasies.

But next time, someone mention the word "free", I'll have to ask him if it
is a debian "free", a suits "free" or a philosophical "free" :-)

Anyway, I got the idea. I took the time and energy to read the debian
manifest.

regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dssslist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-dssslist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Cees de Groot
Sent: Monday, May 03, 1999 2:07 PM
To: dssslist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: RE: About the article


>This is confusing, we'll need a dictionnary if word do not mean what a
>dictionnary tell us what they mean :-)
>
<OffTopic>
Didier,

Are you maybe native French-speaking? It doesn't seem to me, from your
writing, that you're native English. My French isn't worth a penny, but
I seem to recall that you can translate "Free" in two ways: "Libre"
and "Gratuit". "Free Software", as per the definition of the term's
inventor, Richard Stallman, uses "Free" in the meaning of "Libre",
like in "free from restrictions on copying, use, etcetera".

Read up on this - I think the file MOTIVATION in the GNU Emacs distribution
(you're likely to find this with archie or ftpsearch) has a lengthy
explanation of the ideas behind freeware.

"Open Source" is a term, in my eyes, that has been invented to make the
concept digestible by suits who couldn't cope with the fact that people
actually want to share software; as such, it has been become quite
contaminated in the year or so the term exists, so I think we should stick
with "freeware". The difference lies in the numbers of "you may think it is
open source but we've got you by your balls anyway" licenses invented by
corporate lawyers at places like IBM, Sun and Apple.

See the Debian Free Software Guidelines at www.debian.org for more
information
on the (quite strict) definition of free software.
</OffTopic>

--
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


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