zlacker

>>gnufx+(OP)
He laments that users "don't know about the freedoms we promote which are increasingly in their interest", but wasn't this the point of Open Source as compared to Free Software, to refocus the messaging from the user's freedoms to the economic benefit for companies?

The Free Software Definition mentions "user" 22 times and "freedom" 79 times, whereas the Open Source Definition has zero occurrences of these terms. It doesn't seem surprising that the user freedom message isn't getting through if you completely scrub it from the messaging.

>>ptx+a5
Agreed. And if BP really wants to change this, he needs to focus on Free Software as a starting point, not Open Source. He complains about RedHat/IBM circumventing the GPL but completely missing the fact that the "more permissive" open source licenses actually condone such behavior. They would even allow IBM to not provide source to their own customers, nevermind prohibiting redistribution.

IMHO the biggest threat to Free Software is the proliferation of open source software. And so the biggest threat to all the open source users/lovers is their own lack of a meaningful philosophy on licensing.

>>phkahl+th
> IMHO the biggest threat to Free Software is the proliferation of open source software.

I'm sure you know this, but to be clear for readers: almost all free software licenses are also open source licenses and vice versa.

The canonical examples are things like the BSD licenses.

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatible...

> This is the original BSD license, modified by removal of the advertising clause. It is a lax, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.

I think it would be clearer to say that the greatest threat to free software is the proliferation of non-copyleft free software which can be closed down if a company so wishes.