FSFE President Urges Community To Strengthen Open Source As a Brand

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."

Comments

False friends, as well as false enemies

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a story in the Firehose a couple days ago that had links to NEC and Panasonic's "source code download" site for their Japanese Docomo phones.

They've been on the Linux bandwagon for years and have been giving away the source. However, they have added the extra stipulation that downloaders need to have actually bought the phone (and require the IMEI to prove it).

This is in direct violation of GPLv2's section 3b which requires the source be available to all.

Anyway, I thought that was interesting and wondered why it never reached the front page (it was orange, so interest was high). And seeing as how the current story is about false friends and false enemies, I thought it appropriate to point out how some of the biggest exploiters of Linux are also sometimes enemies of free software.

One should never RTFA, indeed ...

[foobsr]

From TFA: "One is to believe there was a substantial difference in the software referred to by the terms "Free Software" and "Open Source." There isn't."

This was when I stopped.

CC.

Re:The Meaning Of "Free"

[TheRaven64]

I prefer Hippyware. Free Software is ambiguous because people think it means software-that-you-don't-pay-for. Open Source is ambiguous because people think it means software-with-source-code-you-can-see (but not necessarily have any right to modify or redistribute). Open Source is also bad marketing, because most people don't care about the source code (although they may care, from a business standpoint, about the associated benefits of having certain rights to the source code).

In contrast, no one I've spoken to has ever misinterpreted Hippyware. People either know what it means, or they ask. They never walk around thinking it means one thing when it means something else, a problem that both Open Source and Free Software share. Software Libre also works, but Hippyware rolls off the tongue a lot better.

False Premise

[malevolentjelly]

Open source is a random barbarian horde of software developers. That would be like creating a brand for things you heard from "Some guy at a bar". Oh, I heard from some guy at a bar that open source software needs to create a unified brand. Isn't the open source community sort of intentionally decentralized? Creating a brand to unify this stuff would be actually very deceptive. The way distributions currently brand their components is probably about as honest and accurate as anyone should require from a product perspective.

There is no "official" open source organization. It's a concept.

Re:False Premise

[Rary]

But there is a brand whether or not it's intentionally created. The output of this "random barbarian horde of software developers" all falls under a single label, "open source", and therefore has the "open source" brand. He describes a brand as being "anyone's gut feeling". In other words, what is it that people think of when they hear "open source software"? Well, that's the brand. It may not have been shaped by anyone intentionally, but it still exists. So, he wants to shape it.

He also makes the point that the de facto brand is actually shaped by those who compete with open source. Microsoft, for example, shapes the open source brand through its marketing. Therefore, by not making a concerted effort to shape the brand in a positive way, the community is effectively allowing it to be shaped in a negative way.

Re:False Premise

[malevolentjelly]

But there is a brand whether or not it's intentionally created. The output of this "random barbarian horde of software developers" all falls under a single label, "open source", and therefore has the "open source" brand. He describes a brand as being "anyone's gut feeling". In other words, what is it that people think of when they hear "open source software"? Well, that's the brand. It may not have been shaped by anyone intentionally, but it still exists. So, he wants to shape it.

It is being branded, though- by Red Hat and Canonical and such. They each brand their own open source ecosystems, as does Mozilla. I believe the branding of open source should remain on a per project basis. As it stands in the mainstream, I would contend that open source is a "feature" moreso than a "brand".

It's not going to be a team effort...

However, props if you guys can distance yourself from GNU and the FSF. That will do wonders for notability.

Re:Okies

[BadAnalogyGuy]

This was actually discussed a couple days ago here on /.

The topic was slightly different, but the parallels exist. Essentially, any difficult concept must be broken down into simpler but less accurate statements in order for the general public to digest them. So when a scientist sees a rise in atmospheric methane levels and has traced the rise to melting methane ice due to increased global temperatures, he needs to 1) explain it simply so that the layman can understand and 2) explain the consequences of the information.

So for any concept which you are hearing, it must be understood that a much more complex and nuanced explanation exists but you aren't getting it.

Take that into the public sphere. It is impossible to debate an issue on its merits, because the time necessary would be prohibitive. So we resort to simplifications and "dogma" to explain the difficult ideas expressed.

The problem is that the lay public is dumb and thinks that what they are hearing is God's Truth. The result is the ever spreading brutishness and lack of subtlety that we see in today's American culture.

Re:Okies

[johnlcallaway]

Except no on hears the name calling other than people like Greve. I don't hear it, because I'm not involved in it.

And since the large majority of people that use open source are also not involved in it, fixing it won't necessarily translate into additional users.

The two main reasons that companies I have worked in don't use open source software is either because they want a paid technician on the other end of the phone, or it was felt the quality wasn't as good.

I suggest Mr. Greve expend his energy on overcoming those two issues if he wants to expand the acceptance of open source software. One only has to wade through the mountains of crap on SourceForge to question whether it is worth the effort to search for the good stuff that surpasses commercial options, or just go buy something.

Branding

[Maximum Prophet]

Branding is what corporations use to add perceived value to merchandise. People will pay more for "Disney" brand shoes than the same shoe with "Bob" brand. Disney might not even sell the shoe, Bob may have paid Disney for use of it's brand.
Alternately, Bob could make better shoes to add value to it's shoes. Unfortunately, the consumer can't always see this value. People won't pay more for unperceived value. Unless Bob wants to build his brand as a high quality product, he can make more money paying Disney for their logo

This would be difficult to apply to "Free Software", because there's so much of it out there, of mixed quality. If it ever took off, and people began associating "Free Software" with quality, anyone could misappropriate the brand, and it's perceived value would fall.

A new brand is in order. Something like LibertySoft(tm) or FSFsoft(tm) that would apply to projects that met certain levels of quality and had a free enough license. Some organization like the FSF would have to own the trademark, and police misuses of the brand.

The Bike Race Breakaway Metaphor

[MarkvW]

In bicycle racing oftentimes a group of people zoom out ahead of the pack (the peloton) and try to race to the front.

The only way those people can even hope to get to the end before the peloton is if they work together and share the aerodynamic load of breaking the wind. Sometimes they work together harmoniously right to almost the very end--then they race it out between themselves.

Most times though, for various tactical reasons, they get squirreley with each other and refuse to cooperate evenly to maximize speed. While they're squirreling around, the peloton bears down on them and swallows them up.

BSD and GNU are on a breakaway from closed source software. They each want an ecosystem where sharing and cooperation are the primary values. They each take different routes. BND is not as radical as GNU, but GNU does more to hamper closed software. Nevertheless, they are each in a breakaway from the closed source peloton.

Mindshare gains are to not accomplished by wasting energy squabbling with your logical ally. AFTER sufficient mindshare has been won from closed source--then squabble and be stupid if you want to! But meanwhile--cooperate on the breakaway!!!! It makes for a better race!!

Re:The Bike Race Breakaway Metaphor

[Braino420]

Mindshare gains are to not accomplished by wasting energy squabbling with your logical ally. AFTER sufficient mindshare has been won from closed source--then squabble and be stupid if you want to! But meanwhile--cooperate on the breakaway!!!! It makes for a better race!!

That's really inspiring and stuff, but, like all analogies, leaves some things out. This is why analogies are a tool for explaining things, not for coming to some logical conclusion (there is no Proof by Analogy in discrete math). Many of the OSI crowd just really don't care how close the dreaded "proprietary software" comes to competing with them, they just want to do their thing the best way they know how. Wiping out proprietary software is the goal of the FSF guys, it's a side effect for the OSI guys.

And what is all of this "wasted energy" nonsense? How is having ideological discussions wasted energy? These users of software, for the most part, don't really care what their software is licensed under. This is something that's really only discussed by the developers of software (and possibly their employers), and so maybe if the OSI and FSF were to join forces to get the proprietary software devs, this might make sense. But I don't see discussion of ideologies as something that hampers the use of F/OSS.

On top of this, I see most of the animosity from the FSF side; they are the ones who are all hung up on ideology and get angry when people *gasp* even explain how to install proprietary software. I know, it's not fair to equate RMS' ideology with that of the entire FSF organization, but he /is/ on /your/ side.

Re:The Bike Race Breakaway Metaphor

[cptdondo]

I remember watching the TDF a few years ago. There was a breakaway that opened up a huge gap. As the kilometers wore on, riders who couldn't keep the pace dropped from the breakaway and got swallowed by the peleton. Finally, there were just two riders left. They knew one would take the stage. At the 1KM banner, they slowed, shook hands, and each went for the finish.

First cooperation, then competition.

Bruce Perens' take

[CarpetShark]

I think it's pretty clear what RMS would say, and (hopefully) why.

What's more interesting is Bruce Perens' take on it. Bruce founded the Open Source Institute with Eric S. Raymond, but Bruce himself has stated that "it's time to talk about Free Software again" as opposed to Open Source, due to the unintended conceptual dilution that Open Source has been exposed to.

Re:Careful!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Linux? Without Linux, GNU would not run at all. All GNU software needs an Operating System to work. It can be a microkernel-structured OS or then just one giant monolith OS. Linux just happend to be there like the old fashion Unix OS'es, a monolithic. GNU does not have it's own OS, Hurd ready yet. So stop spreading FUD and propaganda of GNU/Linux and focus to facts to just call it Linux.

You can call those complete software systems aka distributions what ever you want, like Ubuntu or Mandriva. But do not mistake them to OS's either!

So yes, RMS was the person who started whole anti-open source with his own political fame hunting for GNU project what he started. Same time he doomed it to suffer years from fighting when people were just GNU or Not-GNU questioning. Without knowledge of technology itself.

And now the state has new player who will ruin all. It is Ubuntu what gives people a illusion that Canonical invented free software and wants to give a free operating system for them. Canonical speaks about GNU/Linux and debian littlebit, but takes all the fame for itself as "humanity to others".

If we want to win and bring people the open source, we need to stop fighting among selfs. Just understand that we all use one OS, with multiple choises and we care about the code quality and we want to offer best support for software what we want to be libre!

Re:The reign in Spain

[causality]

So we should reign in the name-callers on either side, and empower those people who know how to build cooperation, corporations, and positive feedback loops.

Can we also empower those people who know the difference between the words "reign", meaning the possession of power or authority, and "rein", which is the strap that you use to control a horse?

Then maybe we could rein in some of the worst abuses of the English language.

Next thing ya know, you'll want people to stop calling themselves "editors" unless they are willing to proofread that single paragraph (a whole paragraph, what a tremendous burden huh?) before submitting it to an audience of many tens of thousands of people.

Re:The Meaning Of "Free"

[Anonymous Coward]

This book Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source is interesting regarding this questoin..