Originally Posted by
Polaris OBark
The ambiguity is
well-known by people familiar with all this! It's the basis of the "free as in beer versus free as in speech" phrase that has been used for
years when talking about the difference.
Originally Posted by
Polaris OBark
Originally Posted by
Polaris OBark
The GPL (GNU Public License) is recognized by everyone who writes software, as well as the courts.
Not all open-source software is licensed under GPL. However anything licensed under GPL is free and open-source. (There are many other open-source licensing standards.)
If you use any of the unix command-line shells, python, ssh, ssl (which you are doing to read this website), anything linux or freeBSD, and a vast number of other programs, you are using free and open-source software. No one in their right mind would refer to that terminology as obscure jargon.
No one in their right mind...
I didn't say it was "obscure".
The vast majority of people here are not going to be familiar with FSF and the fairly-specific meaning they apply to "free" (or any of the rest of you mentioned).
The vast majority of people here are going to see "free" as meaning "no cost to me".
So, you managed to prove my point.
Originally Posted by
Polaris OBark
If you use any of the unix command-line shells, python, ssh, ssl (which you are doing to read this website),...
This is ridiculous. Very few of the people using this website will have any idea about what
any of this means!.