Richard Stallman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > ;;; codesearch.el --- allowing users to search for open-source code on > > Would you please call it "free software code"? > Using the term "open source" downplays the ethical issues > which are the most important issues. > > See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html > for more explanation. >
My apologies to all for being off topic in this sources group, but I think this is an important issue. While I agree with the sentiments, I'm not sure 'free software' would be correct in this case. Maybe you can clarify. From what I've read I'd expect that free software is a subset of open source software (i.e. not all open source software is free in the sense that it protects our freedoms). Therefore, referring to codesearch.el as a utility to search for free software would only be correct if all the software titles it returned were ones with licenses such as the GPL, which protect our freedoms and exclude packages with other licenses which don't have those protections. There maybe a valid argument in saying that we should always use the term free software to reinforce the important issues rather than 'open source'. However, I wonder if doing this generally may have a negative effect in that if it is applied to software which doesn't protect our freedoms people will associate the free with free beer rather than freedom or worse yet, think that all open source software protects our rights. Personally, I think we should only use the term 'free software' to refer to a package when the license does actually protect our freedom and use the term 'open source' if the license doesn't have that level of protection. . Although I've not had a chance to look at the package (which I think will be quite useful), a nice addition would be if the search results were gruped into 'free' and 'non-free' (with free being presented first). How easily this could be done I don't know. Congrats BTW on GPLv3. Tim -- tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au _______________________________________________ gnu-emacs-sources mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-emacs-sources
