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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure the FSF's definition of Free Software is a good example of your point here? That definition is almost entirely only respected by western software developers who support the FSF's cause. Just type "free software" into your favorite search engine and see how commonly that definition is followed in practice.

Honestly, I think we should just say OSI-licensed if we mean OSI-licensed. Words are only as good as they can be used to communicate with others. If people misunderstand me, it's my fault.

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If we're talking about "free software" in the context of licensing the FSF's definition is the only one that matters.

Obviously there is free (no cost) software as well, at least in English where we have one word for both meanings. This can be easily disambiguated in a discussion by the "free as in speech, not free as in beer" phrase, or if people are familiar with the term, using "libre software" to clarify.

Actually English does have a perfectly serviceable word, but for some reason no one is interested in calling at freedom software. yes it is grammatically awkward, but that’s a less worse problem than being semantically awkward, IMHO.

"Freedom software" sounds like word salad to my American ear, so I'm not sure how you see that as serviceable. If you showed me the phrase and put a gun to my head to guess what it meant, I'd probably guess it was a jokey way of talking about software written in France.

I like that. "Free software" will never stop causing misunderstandings. The first you come across "freedom software" you might google it, but the first time you see "free software" you will think it just means free ($0) software.

Unfamiliar terms should fail fast in peoples' minds, not be silently mistaken for familiar terms.

Problem with language is interpretation and use by the masses. IE see Decimate.

"Freedom" noun to me is almost interchangeable with "overtly American" noun.

While not the technical definition by proper english the connotations count.

The OSI should have picked their own term that they could have trademarked, not an existing simply descriptive term, then we wouldn't have this problem.

As far as I know, the term "open source" was coined by the same people who were involved in founding OSI (though the OSI founders were a subset of the people who first used the term). I'd be very curious to see examples of widespread use before 1997 or so.

See the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

You are misinformed. The term "open source" has a history that predates the OSI by at least eight years, possibly longer (but I can only provide cites going back eight years). Please see my full reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26507460

For example, read the last line of this:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html

> As far as I know, the term "open source" was coined by the same people who were involved in founding OSI

I think this has been shown to be a bit of a myth.

They claim to have coined it in 1998 but there's evidence of it in use in context without even needing to explain the idea by other people as far back as 1993.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.pro...

Also, the fact is the USPTO wouldn't allow them to trademark it because it has a simple existing descriptive term.

It was a descriptive term used for intelligence (i.e. OSINT) well before 1998. Here's a book from 1976 using the term several times:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Human_intelligence/VE9s...

They did. "OSI" and "Open Source Initiative" are their trademarks. Which is why people should use these words instead. These do only have one clear meaning.

Many other languages have an unambiguous word for "libre", and can translate "libre software" directly.

I think this is a good solution. English is not a prescriptive language; loanwords are perfectly valid.

Of course, 'OSI-license' is more accurate still, as they don't have a monopoly on 'libre' either. Many would say the WTFPL is accurately described as libre, even if OSI doesn't.

Unfortunately the word "free" has a dual meaning between "with no/few limitations" and "zero cost". Sometimes, people use the latter definition - using context clues to determine which version of the word is in use is needed similar to other English words with dual meanings.

So does "open" and "open-source" which both predate their use for software.

So does "Windows," "Apple" or "Facebook."

Yes, and those are all proper nouns as far as the English language is concerned and registered trademarks as far as their use in trade is concerned.

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