[GRASS5] Terminology: Free Software

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 03:33:04PM -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> > thanks for your perspective. As I wrote, I am well aware of the
> > implications and the different arguments.
> >
> > It is my hope to not repeat the debate in full length here.
> > Still weigthing all arguments for myself I find that talking about
> > Free Software might be a good idea so I recommend it.
> 
>   It ain't official, but why don't we just start using the term,
> "unconstrained software"? That avoids the baggage of ambiguous "free" and
> "open source". IMO, most people would have no problem intuitively
> understanding what is meant by "unconstrained". OTOH, we could use the terms
> "modifiable" or "freely-modifiable".

it is so bad to have already two terms. We shouldn't invent further.
We would spend even more time to explain that the new term
means the same as the old term.

About the fear that people mix up Free Software with 'for free':
Do you really think that the majority of people is so stupid that
they don't realize that Freedom is meant?
I don't. Especially GRASS users are usually quite intelligent
and well-educated.

Jan

-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

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