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

Pfah.

[guyminuslife]

Refrain from name-calling? What an idiot.

The Meaning Of "Free"

[Rary]

Although he insists that there's no difference between "Free Software" and "Open Software", he needs to realize that he won't get far in truly creating a "brand", which he also refers to as "anyone's gut feeling", using a word that the majority of those "anyone"s out there have a "gut feeling" means something other than what he intends it to mean.

To anyone who is not part of the F/OSS movement, "free software" means software that doesn't cost anything, and it always will. Don't try to change people's perception of words to match what your product is, change the words you use to steer people's perception of the product. If it's freedom you want to communicate, then do it with the word "freedom", or the word "open", or something similar, but not "free", which, when placed in front of a product (such as "software"), always implies "zero dollars" to the rest of the world.

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.

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.

Re:FOSS Brand?!

[gbjbaanb]

Well, Linux is a brand (only the fatally jealous calls is GNU/Linux :) )

That's enough to make it a 'known entity' amongst some, if it wasn't branded as such, each distro called themselves something completely unique, then they wouldn't have anywhere near the same amount of effort and support behind them. The fact that each distro can call themselves a Linux distro makes it completely different.

I don't think we need a single thing to market when having many flavours is quite sufficent.

Re:False friends, as well as false enemies

[andy.ruddock]

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.

Loosely translated...

[TrebleJunkie]

"Somebody please tell RMS to StFU."

Re:One should never RTFA, indeed ...

[skeeto]

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.