* Preston Miller Firestone via libreplanet-discuss <[email protected]> [2022-03-23 17:22]: > TL;DR: Testing search terms related to "free software" in > duckduckgo"
As Duckduckgo recently clearly stated that they can and will manipulate specific search terms to be lower ranked than it should be; I can't say that this search engine is behaving ethically and that it can be used as ethical standard for these measures you presented. > "free software" returned results recommending software that we would > call "gratis", like Photoshop Express, right next to software we would > call "free", like the GNU image manipulation program. Most of the other > results are focused on software that can be downloaded without > paying, rather than software that respects the user's freedom. A > noteable exception on the first page is sourceforge, but their result > says "free open source software". When presenting results of an URL, then I recommend to post the URL itself. There is also difference if you used terms - [free software] with quotes or - [free software] without quotes Here is one example for "free software" with quotes: https://searx.tiekoetter.com/search?q=%22free+software%22 And I get 5 examples of "free software" as in the definition from free software philosophy, while other examples are not relevant. Though my result is quite different from your above described result, I did not get any information about Photoshop Express for example. In general I don't think you or we shall rely on automated search engines to give us some standards of how words should be used. Jean Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns In support of Richard M. Stallman https://stallmansupport.org/ _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
