> With the exception of Richard Stallman, I do not know of anyone who *never*
uses proprietary software.
Richard Stallman doesn't fit that description, either. He states on his page
about his computing that he doesn't worry about what software is running in
another person's computer that he is borrowing for doing Web searches or
something else brief. What he doesn't do is use proprietary software on his
own computer, when he can avoid it (and even then, it should be noted that
there is embedded software in things like his keyboard and hard drive which
is proprietary; he considers that to be acceptable because it's technically
unchangeable).
> Can anyone on this forum honestly claim to *never*, *ever*, use proprietary
software?
Most of us probably still have proprietary boot loaders on our systems, and
most of us probably still sometimes (or even always) execute proprietary
JavaScript code in our Web browsers.
> Sure, when I'm talking about software I call it "free code", or "free code
software", because I find that phrase is less ambiguous than "free software",
which is easily mistaken for "freeware" by the uninitiated.
I like "libre", personally. I find that people have no trouble understanding
this when I explain it as something like, "Libre software is software that
gives the user liberty." Easy to understand, and avoids the confusion of free
as in price vs. free as in freedom.
> I consider it authoritarian to police other people's use of language.
I agree with this. But also, on a deeper level, I don't think what language
people use makes as much of a difference as Orwell suggested in Nineteen
Eighty-Four, so I think making a fuss over what language people are using is
unproductive.
Consider this real-world example: North Korea openly uses the term
"propaganda" to describe its propaganda to North Koreans. And yet, its
propaganda still works. The reason is simple: North Koreans haven't been
conditioned to view propaganda from the North Korean state as untrustworthy
or bad. They've been conditioned the opposite way. So the term "propaganda",
when applied to propaganda originating from the North Korean state, has no
negative connotation there.
Another real-world example in the opposite direction: how many people do you
know who would say that they are OK with "piracy" (referring to unauthorized
copying of works)? It may vary, but I'd wager to guess that it's greater than
0. Because sure, the term "piracy" was probably originally a smear term when
it was introduced over 400 years ago. But people have no trouble at all
understanding that copyright infringement is not the same thing as "attacking
a ship".
There are many, many more examples.
Of course, sometimes it's worth it to stop using certain language because
it's vague. This is why I say "libre", not "free software" (which may suggest
free as in cost) or "open source" (which may suggest only source code
availability). I wouldn't consider it productive to tell others that their
word choices are vague in most situations, though; I would just ask for a
clarification if necessary.
