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Linux & Microsoft as a Cold War?
I confirm writes "The BBC's Bill Thompson summarises the GNU/Linux vs. Microsoft struggle as a "cold war", and in one choice quote says:"It is rather ironic that Microsoft and other closed model companies rather resemble the Stalinist or Maoist model of a command economy with complete centralised control."
I'm not sure I accept Thompson's conclusions, however: "So now would be a good time to start thinking about how we persuade governments that market in software may eventually need to be regulated, just as the market in electricity, water and food is, and that that regulation may well include a statutory duty to disclose source code and allow it to be used elsewhere." "
Since RMS coined the term "free software", there has been talk about the semantic problems inherit in the term "free software." I've thought for a long time that RMS made a basic mistake when he coined the term "free software." The term has problems. I want to discuss two in particular.
First off, in the English language, the adjective "free", when paired with an inanimate noun, means free of charge. It does in every other context. If I say that I got a "free toaster", then you will assume that I meant that I didn't pay anything for it, not that the toaster comes with special rights. So the very term for the movement is equally open to deliberate misrepresentation, and simple misunderstanding. If you want a meme to become widespread, but it can't be understood without a semantic interpretation, then you have a problem.
The second problem is that "free" is not really an attribute of the software. Free software is "free" because of a choice by the copyright holder.
So why not "freed software" instead.
This term would solve both problems. On the one hand, it would extinguish the erroneous interpretation that the software is merely "free of charge", because the word "freed" is never used in that context. At the very least, someone who never heard that term would wonder (and perhaps ask) what it specifically meant, instead of immediately reaching the erroneous conclusion (which works against the movement) that "free software" is about zero-cost or public domain software, based on the way the word "free" is used as an adjective in the rest of the English language.
On the other hand, it correctly attributes the action of making software into "freed software" to the author/copyright holder. Freeing someone is considered to be a noble gesture. An act not just of giving, but of elevating he whom is freed. A freed slave becomes a freedman. I truly believe that the act of releasing software under the GPL is a noble gesture. It is an act of giving to the community. The term "freed software" would refocus the emphasis from the software to the programmer. And that's a good thing. What we need now isn't more free software. We need more people to make the transition from keeping their software proprietary to releasing their work as freed software.
I also believe that a great deal of the success of the term "open source" is because it is semantically correct -- the opposite of open source is closed source. That's something that people intuitively understand. I'm wondering if a careful redefinition of the free software movement as the "freed software movement" would have the same effect for RMS's ideals and goals.
Comments and criticisms welcomed.
When you say you don't like Microsoft, you really don't like the choices millions of people make.
Its not a choice millions of people make. Windows is bundled with virtually all PCs. How is this choice?