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Comment by cwyers | Hacker News Reader

> My interest in free or open source software has never been either political or industrial. My interest has always been educational. That is, access to the source code provided the opportunity to learn from it. So, in the same spirit as the Open Source / Free Software distinction, I coined the term Liberal Software to refer to software where the intent of the programmer is educational (liberal as in education). Any one of these three intents can produce software for which the source code is available — and that is often called FLOSS, meaning Free, Liberal, or Open Source Software.

As far as I can tell, the L in "FLOSS" is typically "libre," not "Liberal." I feel like the author is vastly and misleadingly inflating his relevance in this post.

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> Today’s topic is political software.

Indeed. And the article is playing dirty politics, imho. The L in "FLOSS" means Libre to me too. The only way I have ever seen it used. Redefining its common meaning is disingenious. Call the alternative FLIBERO or something.. free, liberal, open. And build your story around that. If people like it, it may gain traction. And otherwise.. too bad. But don't hijack existing acronyms like this.

(OT: Hijacking terminology happens more often by big tech. The other day I came upon a great example, but forgot. But terms like "serverless" are example, meaning 'servers abstracted away by The Cloud')

I believed that the L meant libre but libre when translated from Spanish to English literly translates as 'free'

So in floss, that would be free free open source software.

Which doesn't seem right? Unless there is another meaning to libre I'm missing?

It's to disambiguate the english uses of the word "free." It's free as in freedom, not free as in beer. Libre (in French, as it is used in the acronym) only means the former.

That makes more sense thanks.

In Spanish as well, because the other meaning of the English "free" (as in free beer) is translated as "gratis", which comes straight from Latin.

It seems the oxford dictionary also has an entry for -gratis- in the english language (middle-age from the same latin origin, as -late middle english-

Interesting!

Given that, I think we should change the acronym to GLOSS.

edit: could mean Gratis and/or Libre Open Source Software

That would enshrine the exact misunderstanding that this thread is trying to correct. Free software is not necessarily gratis.

Then why not call it LOSS? The F has to mean something, and if it doesn't mean libre it either means gratis or it's redundant and confusing. GLOSS could be a different thing, to differentiate it from PLOSS (paid libre open source software).

The F is to keep the FSF happy.

I do like the idea of distinction between GLOSS and PLOSS, but we've got enough acronym soup at this point that I'd say just stick with FLOSS.

Also, many people who only speak English don't know the word Libre.

> Then why not call it LOSS?

Because then people would think they are losing something by using it? /s

Free Software was coined by (probably) RMS to highlight how users of such software are getting a number of _freedoms_: namely those to use, modify and share that software onwards (with or without their modifications).

It is in opposition to "restricted" software where you are restricted in all of those. (Copyleft software restrict others from adding more restrictions, which is defensible but some BSD proponents disagree)

Libre is, as many have said, just the Latin word for Free. You'd still have to explain what it means in this context.

"Open Source" has similar problems: many think that it's enough for source code to be available for inspection for software to be called "Open Source", but it is just a another attempt to market a philosophy under a particular name.

These constructs are created to have a special meaning to promote an ideology, and are thus usually capitalized in English. This is nothing uncommon, and attempting to use these—now accepted—phrases to mean something else is bound to cause confusion. So, just like you learn what a "programming language" or "HyperText Transport Protocol" is (yes, one transfers a lot more than just "HyperText" over it), if you are in IT, one should learn what "Free Software" and "Open Source" mean.

Well, not all libre software is gratis.

Indeed, in Dutch we have "Vrij" (Libre, free as in freedom) and "Gratis" (a term I sometimes see used on international fora as well, meaning free, as in beer). Since English does not have this distinction Libre was used. I never ever associated it with Liberal.

In German too, "frei" and "gratis/kostenlos". However, paradoxically "free beer" is actually "Freibier", not "Gratis-Bier"...

With beer it's a bit special, because beers you didn't pay for have some freedom: they can decide to leave your stomach even against your will back the way they came :D

But if you paid for it, they ain't allowed to, of course.

The issue is that the word "free" in English has two meanings, while other languages have two separate words for each meaning (gratis = free of charge, libre = free as in freedom). The reason why L means Libre is to emphasise that the "free" in "free software" refers to the libre meaning of the word "free", not necessarily the gratis meaning.

This is also what the phrase "free as in speech, not as in beer" attempts to disambiguate.

And then, just to complicate matters, there is free beer – “Free as in free speech”.

http://freebeer.org/blog/recipe

It refers to the civil liberties kind of Free. You have the term "free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. The Libre makes it clear that the first kind of Free is referred to here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software

Update: The distinction is important. It also entails that people should be able to earn a living by providing FLOSS software. Many people that don't know much about FLOSS think of it as the "Free beer" variant (something promoted by much of big tech, which is seemingly free). There can be good business models attached to FLOSS (though devs have a very hard time to monetize in practice).

I heartily applaud anyone trying to monetize FLOSS based on decent principles and values, rather than just bottom-line, willingly taking the hard road of founding a bootstrapped, sustainable business.

To add to the other answers, the acronym used to be FOSS. People changed it to FLOSS exactly because unethical corporations kept exploiting the confusion between "libre" and gratis on the English language to misinform people.

(Notably Microsoft had the gals to do it in its English PR and translate all over the world, including literal translations to Latin languages where both words are completely different.)

Shared source is the term for what he means, code for educational purposes only.

Yeah, and “FLOSS” is just an example of that. The whole text is painfully self-aggrandising with no real insight.

Robert, the author, has a very twisty tongue. Twisting meanings, and (his) intents.

The author is quite clearly an ignoramus on the topic of FLOSS, and can be safely ignored. I'm not sure how this got to the front page of HN. It's embarrassing, frankly.

indeed, I'm not native speaking, but is - 'Thirdly, the rhetoric of Free Software devotees is awkward and unconvincing.' - 'devotee' respectful rhetoric? Isn't that, well, awkward and unconvincing?

Yes a bit of a dog whistle given the current use of "liberal" in the USA

From the OP:

> Caring about who gets the credit more than successfully creating change is not a good look.

So yeah, the author is disingenuous at best.

Another point where they pretend not to see the benefits: Free Software and specifically copyleft has succeeded in getting so many manufacturers to publish their kernel source code, opening the door for bringing more freedom to a bunch of people using their technological devices today (eg. all the ROMs for phones and IoT devices).

And the attempt to highlight the "metonymy" (you know they are bullshitting as soon as they start using terms unfamiliar to the masses) in "free press" but argue against "free software" standing for "software that can be freely used" is very hypocritical too. Righto, who is this "the speech" in "free speech" (alluding to their use of "the software" group).

I've given up reading at that point because it's a post by someone bitter focusing on an unproven premise (how a political ideology has failed if there is no change in leadership for more than 10 years — maybe it's because centralised leadership is not necessary to achieve it ;-)).

Anyway, language is free for people to adapt to their needs, and no amount of elitist grammatical nitpicking will ever change that.

(liberal as in education)

I don't understand. What definition of "liberal" has a meaning in education?

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Liberal_education

Yep, it is libre, so as to invoke "free as in freedom" rather than "free as in beer"

Well he does claim advocacy for social justice and other authoritarian left political ideologies, it is common practice in those circles to refine terms to meet their political objectives so it is not shocking he would attempt to redefine FLOSS to meet his political needs

Searching "free liberal open source software" basically just returns sites that copied Wikipedia's FOSS page that calls it a counter to neoliberalism.

Wait you support FOSS because of education? I wonder how you feel about college education and student debt then...

">" fyi means the the following paragraph is a quote, just in case you missed it.

Why do I need to quote it? It's right above.

They are explaining to you that in the post you replied to, the part prefixed “>” was a quote from the article and your original post reads as if you thought that part was an expression of the comment authors opinion. The only part of the post you replied to that was not from the article was:

> As far as I can tell, the L in "FLOSS" is typically "libre," not "Liberal." I feel like the author is vastly and misleadingly inflating his relevance in this post.

Ahh I replied to the wrong thread. I meant to reply to the parent thread but the point still stands imo.

I dare one person to actually articulate their response if they downvoted.

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