[GNUz] What did the FSF ever do for us?

[Rik Tindall]

Hi Phil,

I meant to say "welcome" after your first post, earlier this year.

Philip Charles wrote:

>On Friday 04 May 2007 22:33, Rik Tindall wrote:
>  
>
>>a) "Libre" is redundant if you've just said "Free", so why the
>>initiative to state it? - Because it conditions "Free", in the very
>>same way that is already achieved by the "OSS" in FOSS, prior to
>>replacing it entirely. i.e. A number of European+ programmers are
>>pushing to remove the "gratis" option within Freedom 2, through "Libre"
>>usage, though more want to keep it.
>>    
>>
>
>Surely free-libre is used to distinguish "free" from free-gratis.
>I have known free-gratis as an English expression since the days computers 
>used vacuum tubes.
>
>FLOSS  (free-libre)(open sourse) software.
>
>Phil.
>

Well, if you want to gobbledegook our language, that is up to you. And 
if you want to have FOSS users subsidise your computing through the 
selling of software, that is also up to you. But you must be prepared to 
fully substantiate the approach, and to those for whom free is allowed - 
even encouraged - to mean free.

No, free-libre means Free. That is, Free means free-libre; we all know 
that, and are usually happy explaining it to anyone. Or so we may have 
thought.

Replacing Freedom with code-commercialising ('Libre', but not Free) 
neo-reaction may be a way of increasing one's software market, and 
friends in high places, but it does little credit to your (community?) 
branding morality. Maybe something needs changing? - Go to the "sourse".

Apart from that, there is no part of your statement that I find believable.

Oh, and some have mistaken this for Yet Another GNU-Bashers' list. It is 
actually, and hopefully neither the first nor the last, a 'bash the 
GNU-bashers' list. (GNU meaning Free Software, explicitly and precisely :)

More of it.

Cheers, Rik