I pretty much agree with this posting. The remaining ambiguities
in our terminology represent some of the philosophical questions we have yet
to settle.
I think hardware designs and standards that are fully free in the
sense FSF uses the term are at least theoretically possible, even if we're
not yet in a position to create them. (... citing exhaustive and exhausting
discussions on this list a year or two ago...) I suspect OpenCores is
closer to achieving that goal than we are.
I'm still bothered by the ambiguity in the definition of "free" in
English. As I once mentioned, we might be better off with a word from
another language, that refers only to freedom.
Regarding our project's name, I don't think we can change it, for
two reasons. One is the widespread recognition. The other is that we are
only able to develop open specification designs with open documentation at
present. Economics prevent us from publishing the full internals and
granting unrestricted modification rights, until up-front costs are
recouped. So I think it would be deceptive to bill ourselves as a free
hardware engineering project, until we're able to deliver on that claim.
We are in a position to speak loudly of our support for both free
and open source software, and we should. That's the purpose of our project,
and we are on track to accomplish that.
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