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Re: Irony
- From: Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>
- To: espie at nerim dot net
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: 01 Dec 2002 09:52:40 -0200
- Subject: Re: Irony
- Organization: GCC Team, Red Hat
- References: <20021130171823.9FA5FF2D62@nile.gnat.com><20021130174744.GA28104@tetto.liafa.jussieu.fr>
On Nov 30, 2002, Marc Espie <espie@nerim.net> wrote:
> 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.
[...]
> 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.
Well, if you want to talk about etymology... Why is it that the word
freedom, derived from `free´, has to do with liberty, not no-cost?
Could it be just because `free´ is often used as a shorthand for `free
of charge?´
> 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).
Well, then help fight the vocabulary alteration that introduced this
new meaning to the word `free´, that originally had to do with
freedom, but that can now be used as the confusing and ambiguous short
version of `free of charge.´
--
Alexandre Oliva Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist Professional serial bug killer