[OT] free software vs open source was: Re: codesearch.el 1.0 --- Search for code via Google Code Search

[Tim X]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> 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