It's a meaningful distinction and the fact that open source mindshare won is what effectively killed any momentum that free software had.
Software freedom completely disappeared from the public discourse and it was not fortuitous.
The term "free" product already meant something to people, and continues to mean that.
There is generally no opportunity to (as RMS might imagine) say "I'm glad you asked about the name. We mean free as in freedom. Let me assemble my lecture podium and explain..."
Instead, people who hear the term have been hearing the opposite of the intent.
Which leads us back ot the current problem, of people thinking it's all random hookups with open source, rather than meaningful relationships.
But yeah I agree naming doesn't help. I'm biased because in my language libre and gratis are distinct. I'll keep that in mind, even though I'm a bit pessimistic and don't think it will help, I guess it won't hurt either.
I think the foot-dragging by some on the name, after it's been pointed out to them, is kinda symptomatic of their difficulty operating in this environment. And they often end up discrediting action that could be viable, but needs to win buy-in from others.
Open source appeared in the public discourse because it had tangible benefits and people could understand what it meant.
I don't think open source killed the concept of software freedom, I think the concept of software freedom as a concept literally never caught on to begin with.
Honestly, I'm a bit tired of the Stallman worship at this point. A lot of people were pessimistic about the future of software and the internet, and they're not all prophets. He observed what was happening when other people chose to naively ignore it and hope for the best, and that's not nothing, but frankly, if he was so smart, then you'd think he'd have a solution. Nonetheless, it seems like everything Stallman actually proposes is impractical and out-of-touch with the current state-of-affairs, which makes me wonder what we're supposed to do other than marvel at the fact that someone was able to reason that this would become an issue some day.
When you release software under a license that makes approximately zero demands of the other party, the other party won't respect your software. When you release software under a license that makes even low effort demands of the user, like reciprocation, they will.
I'll let Stallman speak for me:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
What Stallman calls Open Source is what the rest of the world calls Source Available. Stallman shows his lack of communication skills again here by endlessly fighting to redefine words for no purpose.
That's absolutely wrong, as clearly explained in the article I linked to.
RMS was around in the 1980s when "open source" was still being defined. So maybe he thinks he can define it however he likes. But to the rest of us it doesn't make sense, like saying "software that has a free software license, like GNU Emacs and Microsoft Word." One of those two doesn't belong in that sentence, and saying that I'm using my own custom definition of "free software" is a pretty shitty way to argue.
Copyleft just ensures that other parties can't take someone's open-source work and close it up and profit off of it. I don't think copyleft is really necessary for when a corporation open-sources some software essential to the use of one of their products.
Go back to Reddit.