Libre / open source culture

the term is confusing for normies, they hear free and think immediately about price. When you say open source you immediately convey that the source is open, what the exact licencing is isn't important for normies.

The term “free software” is prone to misinterpretation: an unintended meaning, “software you can get for zero price,” fits the term just as well as the intended meaning, “software which gives the user certain freedoms.” We address this problem by publishing the definition of free software, and by saying “Think of ‘free speech,’ not ‘free beer.’” This is not a perfect solution; it cannot completely eliminate the problem. An unambiguous and correct term would be better, if it didn't present other problems.

Unfortunately, all the alternatives in English have problems of their own. We've looked at many that people have suggested, but none is so clearly “right” that switching to it would be a good idea. (For instance, in some contexts the French and Spanish word “libre” works well, but people in India do not recognize it at all.) Every proposed replacement for “free software” has some kind of semantic problem—and this includes “open source software.”

yeah I've read that and I like RMS and all but still I like the term open source and will keep using it. It conveys the most important part of the design philosophy in a simple two word term. My second favorite has to be libre and free is my least favorite term to use.

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can you show me parts of foss culture that AREN'T commie/socialist?

I didn't give a fuck about open/closed source until I couldn't play flashgames offline anymore as a kid. Holy shit my anger could have set the world on fire.

Here's an example that's more libertarian, the open source gun:
defdist.org/

I love the open source creative tools that keep improving:
> Krita
> Gimp
> Blender
> Ardour
> Inkscape
> Godot
> Libreoffice
> LMMS

You are missing the point. Being open source != being free. If you are so concerned about confusing people, just say 'free (as in freedom) software'.

true but if something is free it is open source, thus I think the term is fine to use if you don't want to be specific.

None of them are. The reason there is a free software movement is due to the fact that the free market is not deciding what is valuable. When you have a loaf of bread, you can't make a copy of it. If you consume it, it is no longer avaliable for use. You cannot distribute it without losing your own access to it. This is not the case with code. Code is easily coppyable, and isnt consumed but reused over and over. You can distribute it without losing access to the code yourself, because you only need to make a copy. If we could copy a loaf of bread as easily as we can code, bread would instantly become worthless (as far as monnetary value goes) in the eyes of the free market because there is a virtually infinite supply. If someone said, "No, you cannot copy that bread, I made it!" despite bread being easilly copyable, you would scoff and disregard them as a moron. Likewise, we should scoff at large companies who deem themselve the sole determinants of the value of their code, instead of allowing the free market to decide. Platforms such as patreon have proven that there are people who give code monetary value, and devs are more than able to adequately generate the appropriate income based on said programs. The free market determines the value, not some tyrannical business orginization who seeks to create a monopoly, which is the opposite of what capitalism stands for.

but just because something is open source does not make it free. This will confuse people more than using the word "free" will, as some will try to create proprietary open-source and tout it as "free" to fool those who dont know better.

GNU have started on Hurd again now that Guix is able to target it so will be interesting to see what happens in the next 10 years.

GuixSD is my favourite so far due to the ease of installing plus the brilliant package management using a declarative style. I sadly can't use it without the non-free kernel as of now but will switch to libre once I retire this old machine.

That's why I said if you don't want to be specific, if I were to talk to developers or talking about the licensing of a technology product as a representative then I would be using more specific language. But when talking to regular people I use open source because that´s what I find to be the most important part of the whole philosophy, that the source is open. I don't care about the exact licensing. Of course there are projects with weird custom licenses and partially proprietary but those are use cases were I would be more specific.

If that what you find to be the most important part of the whole philosophy then you are missing the point. Open Source and Free Software are two totally different issues. And the normies, the ones who are most likely to be confused by all this shit, are the ones we need to understand the most. The two terms are not interchangable, and to use them in such a way negates a lot of what free software is all about. We have to be precise if we want these things to take off, because the lack of precision is how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place.

Interesting, I heard some hype about the Guix package manager, didn't realize that they started to work on Hurd again. The last commit I saw was from 2016.

What is the biggest difference between open source and free that is so important?

free as in free beer /= free to study, derive new works from, and extend

The terms arent synonymous. If there exsists open source software the relies on proprietary software, it cannot be truly free.

Our old friend Richie explains it better than I ever could: gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

The difference is minimal and only someone who would be interested in technology and licensing would it worth to explain it too. Maybe I should use the term FLOSS instead.

Are you retarded? did you read the link I gave you? The difference might seem small, but it is as large as it can be. If we want to convince normies of this shit we HAVE to make sure there is no confusion.

What you mean? The Open Watcom license or the fact that open source programs run on proprietary systems and make it hard to modify? The difference is small and not to interesting to a normie.

The whole point is that normies SHOULD be interested.

The thing is that the whole free philosophy isn't that interesting to certain people while the definition is more practical. I think it's easier if you make people first familiar with open source and if they're still interested that would make explaining the whole four freedoms easier for the person to understand.

>while the definition is more practical
*while the definition of open source is more practical

You are making excuses. Normies not caring is what got us into this mess. We have to show them they should care, even about the minor differences.

dude... normies eat up apple products like no tomorrow just because it works and looks good. Normies care more about pragmatism and aesthetic than principles and morals. If you can explain to person the open source development model and why it's practically better you might get him interested enough to explain the principles of free software without the person falling asleep. The same reason why you have some christians that believe just to go to heaven but don't care about the main principles and the philosophies .