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FSFE President Urges Community To Strengthen Open Source As a Brand

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the someone-better-tackle-stallman dept.

Georg Greve, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), has an insightful look at FOSS from a brand perspective with urgings that the community come together and strengthen open source as a unified brand. "There are plenty of false enemies to go around. Ironically, the most common form of false enemy is found around the animosity that has built around branding and framing issues, more specifically in the area of 'Free Software' vs 'Open Source.' Name-calling and quarreling on either side is not helpful, and serves to hide the common base and interest in having a strong brand and powerful message. The historical facts around Free Software are well documented and available to anyone who wishes to look them up. But instead of focusing on past insults and wrongs, I believe our focus should be on the future. We should realize that what divides us pales in comparison to what we have in common and that division and exclusion are harmful to us all. So we should rein in the name-callers on either side, and empower those people who know how to build cooperation, corporations, and positive feedback loops."

2 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Re:False friends, as well as false enemies by andy.ruddock · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except that section 3b of GPL v2 says that the source code needs to made available to those for whom you make available copies of your work.
    Nowhere does it say that you have to make copies of your work available for everybody, neither does it say that you have to make the source available to everybody.

    What it does do is prevent anybody who already has copies of the work (obtained by legal/lawful means), and/or the source code, making it available to others.

    --
    God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
  2. Re:One should never RTFA, indeed ... by skeeto · · Score: 4, Informative
    This is specifically addressed in TFA. In fact, that's really what TFA is all about. Here is the exact quote again,

    One is to believe there was a substantial difference in the software referred to by the terms "Free Software" and "Open Source."

    He is referring to a specific definition -- the original definition -- for Open Source, which was practically the same as Free Software. Standing by itself there, without context, he seems inconsistent, but he's not. Now read down a bit,

    Open Source is a failed re-branding effort over which its creators lost control, followed by brand degradation through abuse and over-extension into areas such as business and development models.

    This is where the Open Source and Free Software divide when it comes to definitions. The brand Open Source was abused and stretched so that it is no longer consistent with Free Software. This makes his statements consistent with the official FSF stance: that Open Source and Free Software are now two different things.