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Re: Irony
- From: Marc Espie <espie at nerim dot net>
- To: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 18:47:44 +0100
- Subject: Re: Irony
- References: <20021130171823.9FA5FF2D62@nile.gnat.com>
- Reply-to: espie at nerim dot net
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 12:18:23PM -0500, Robert Dewar wrote:
> There is a confusion here. Most certainly software is not Free Software
I very much dislike this idiom: Free Software.
It is on a par with Catholic Church, except that Catholic Church has
mostly obvious connotations, whereas Free Software takes existing terms
(free, and software), and assigns to them some meanings which are not
obvious at all, nor exempt of controversy.
One very good thing about Open Source is that the etymology of it is
non-intuitive enough that one feels obligated to look a definition up,
and not assign intuitive (or counter-intuitive) meaning to it.
I'm sorry, but use of the `Free Software' term smells of propaganda, and
has some very bad connotations for me (because I'm very much wary of
propaganda, especially when it's based on replication of memes through
vocabulary alteration).