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Blog postings by Andrew Cowie about Open Source and Software Development
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blogs > andrew > software > freedom > free-range
Thu, 24 Jan 2008
Free Range Software
Jon Hall writes of his experience in a restaurant talking with its owner about “Free Range Eggs”:
“… but we have to charge money for our eggs. People who don’t acknowledge that just do not want to understand the term ‘Free Range’ for what it really means … better eggs, and changing the term will not help that.”
The fact that the discussion started because of maddog’s suggestion that maybe they should be called “open range eggs” to eliminate the confusion is not the point (“that’s silly” the owner said, “everyone calls them free range eggs”). The term we use, Free Software, has a bigger problem. Consider the difference between:
- Free Range Eggs
- Free Eggs
Clearly, the term is “Free Range”, and applies as an adjective to “Eggs”, whereas the latter really does mean “free eggs”. Now consider this:
- Free Software
There’s something missing, and so the term free gets connotated as having to do with price.
No, I’m not about to say that we should call it Free Range Software [and while “let it run free!” is a lovely metaphor, I don’t quite think we want to be associating our work with chicken farming :)]. Perhaps someone will come up with an intermediate word that will do the trick. To be honest, though I’ve pretty much given up on the term Free Software; I write Open Source software, and the cause I advocate is Software Freedom.
And when people still stare at you blankly, you can say “you know, like Linux” and watch as comprehension dawns. To be sure, they probably still don’t get it, but chances are you’ve got more important things to talk about, and getting on with it is going to do you — and logiciel libre — a lot more good than getting lost because of the insufficiencies of the English language.
AfC
Thanks to Atul Chitnis for having passed on the link.
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