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Comment by mc3 | Hacker News Reader

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mc3·

It's not free. But it is open source.

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Open source is meant to be a corporate-friendly synonym for "free software".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#Origins

This basically means that if it's not free, it's not open source either.

Thanks for the downvotes. Read up on https://www.fsf.org/

It is completely free.

Sorry, I mean free as in "Libre". Freedom to do what you want with the software.

That's really a stance of the FSF I dislike, redefining "Free" to something that was ideologically pleasing to them but that means something absolutely different for everyone else.

Creating tons of confusion and not helping their cause at all as free proprietary software may benefit from the label when distributed to the masses as they heard "free" software is good.

The FSF did not originate the meaning of "free software". They insist upon it, but before 1998 when "open source" was coined, "free software" was just what everyone called it. Even OpenBSD, who staunchly disagrees on a lot of things with the FSF, has been calling itself "free software" since 1996.

It's not a redefinition. "Free" carries at least 2 meanings in English.

You are right.

Thinking about it, my previous point may be heavily biased by how “free software” sounds and how the wording is used in my native language.

There is a good point in there. I caused confusion here. Most people would thing "free software" means free as in $0, because it make more sense in the context of software, which isn't a person. A free felon, by contrast would imply person, so they have freedom. We are not giving away felons.

FSF's "free" is neither. You can't do whatever you want with GPL software and if you want to do those forbidden things, you can sometimes buy permission using money.

True. you are free to do what you want, except restrict other people's freedom.

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