Krishna Pagadala wrote:
From the list, my understanding of what people on the list are trying to do, are
- Spread free software
- Talk about freedoms provided, and ask people to
reject freedom-subtracted software on ethical grounds. 3) Get government to use free software Note that 1 and 3 are done by OSF also, only 2 above is anathema to OSF.
The OSF may be called OSI (Open Source Initiative), as they call themselves. I think in reality, both FSF and OSI speed ahead in the same direction and both value freedom, inspite of the acrimonious debates on terminology. The OSI considers "open source" a sales pitch for "free software", or a label for business. This superficial labelling is fine for businesses governed by the caveat emptor rule, but there are no excuses for government endowed with "legislative wisdom" to toe this line of OSI. Authority in a democracy is derived from the faculty of collective reasoning, and so we have a special responsibility to throw light on free software, so that people may uniformly use free software terminology everywhere including legislation and business.