[ox-en] liberal or conservative use of language...
- From: Russell McOrmond <russell flora.ca>
- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 11:41:48 -0500 (EST)
On Sat, 25 Jan 2003, MJ Ray wrote:
Russell McOrmond <russell flora.ca> wrote:
In the same interest, you should have clicked on the URL I sent that
would have indicated to you that I knew where the term FLOSS originated.
...or and cut-and-pasted it to a browser. Please don't assume that everyone
uses the same non-free email client as you.
I'm beginning to question the value of reading your messages, given how
little time you put into researching your opinions.
You make accusations that you could trivially verify, such as the fact
that my email come from pine. In fact, there are no non-free packages on
either my work or home computers.
Anyway, I did, but it peddles some myths (such as "open source" is a
more popular term -- certainly more used, but everyone seems to mean
different things by it, so it isn't really the same term), so laying out
the objections for others on-list seemed a useful balance.
Has it occurred to you that you live in a different part of the world
than I do, and my experience will be different? These aren't myths any
more than they are cold-hard-facts. They are just observations from
living "Free Software Advocacy" for 10 years now within Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada.
Here, and especially in a Government policy context, Open Source is very
popular. Few people (outside the 'in the know' community) have heard of
"Free Software" other than from some vendor who tried to dupe them into
believing it was the same as "freeware".
Like RMS I was temporarily happy about the "Open Source" term until I
realized that it referred to something different. Unlike RMS I believe
that for marketing purposes it is better to not get upset (and waste
everyones time) each time someone said Open Source rather than Free
Software. I have now come to introduce the topic using a more inclusive
phrase that clarified both the meaning of the word Free, and the
relationship to Open Source.
You obviously disagree with the term FLOSS, and you are not alone.
Fine, then don't use it - pretty simple.
I wasn't promoting it for use by everyone, just mentioning it in the
context of another thread about multiple understandings of existing
language. To market Free Software you sometimes have to use words other
than "Free Software". To market your political ideas you sometimes have
to use words other than the ones that *you* (incorrectly) think people
have a common understanding of.
You can be elitist in your usage of language and deliberately exclude
people from conversations, or you can try to be more open and liberal
minded by helping move more people to share common ideas and goals.
If other members of the forum agree with your attitude, then I'll just
find another forum to discuss these things in. Your belief seems to be
that participants should share your exact usage of language, and that
anything that disagrees (such as a dictionary ;-) must be wrong. That
might be fine for you, but in my promotion of Free Software I've learned
not to take such a conservative approach to communications.
Enough on this thread -- I'll observe other comments to see what the
future will hold...
---
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses,
VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen
and not a third party. -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/
_______________________
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