But "Free Software" doesn't liberate you as much as "Open Source Software" - with BSD licensed "open source" projects, I can literally do whatever I want with the code.

With GPL licensed "free software" projects, I am not allowed to distribute in certain ways, locked out of packaging with certain other licensed code in certain ways.

>> Seriously, it's not the software that's free (as in libre), it's you

Except that it's the exact opposite

> Except that it's the exact opposite

You're wrong. GPL makes you free like human rights do: You are free to do whatever you want as long as you don't step on other people freedom. With the GPL, you can do whatever you want with the software except prohibiting users to do whatever they want with the software, with BSD you can do whatever you want with the software including prohibiting users to do what they want.

GPL promotes freedom, BSD does not.

> With the GPL, you can do whatever you want with the software except prohibiting users to do whatever they want with the software

The GPL can prohibit me from distributing the program modified to depend on proprietary closed-source code, even if that's what I want to do with the software.

> with BSD you can do whatever you want with the software including prohibiting users to do what they want.

Exactly - the point is that BSD doesn't limit me at all, and the GPL limits me fairly severely. The GPL guarantees that the code under the GPL and all its derivatives will remain free forever - the code is free. The BSD license guarantees that I have the freedom to do whatever I want.

> Exactly - the point is that BSD doesn't limit me at all, and the GPL limits me fairly severely.

But the BSD allows you to limit what your users can do, the GPL does not. Again, this is how all our democracies and human rights work.

No, it is most certainly not. In most, if not all, democracies, you have the right to restrict the freedoms of others through contract. For instance, if you want to buy a piece of furniture from me, I can impose conditions on how you use it. This is not common practice, because it isn't feasible to enforce and most people selling furniture don't care. However, it wouldn't be a violation of your human rights. Democracies allow us to limit the freedom of others as a condition of them engaging in commerce with us. No human rights are violated.

I never said human rights are being violated. I'm saying that human rights work the same way by allowing you to do whatever you want as long as you don't step on others freedom.

All of the BSD licenses, and also the GPL, are free-software licenses, as well as open-source licenses. If you want to argue about which particular licenses are more or less free or open, you should do it in a separate thread, ideally on a separate site, instead of trying to derail this thread.

Actually, the way I think about free software is that the GPL gives the software unalienable rights. Free software cannot be enslaved or killed, and neither can its progreny. BSD licensed software, on the other hand, is free, but anybody who pays for the upbringing of its progeny can enslave or kill that progeny at will.

I don't think this view matches reality. For example, imagine that I fork and modify some GPL'ed software and only distribute it within my company (or just use it myself). I'm not required to distribute source to anyone other than the users of my modified program, so (to use your term) I have "enslaved" my version of the software. I think it's clear that "free software" refers to the freedom of the users of that software.

(disclaimer: I am not an advocate of the "free software" moniker/agenda although I happily use and contribute to open source software and don't object to judicious use of the GPL.)

You are right, but I still find this imperfect analogy the best way to 'explain' why the FSF would attach the adjective 'free' to 'software'.

I also wonder what the FSF's response would be if such "within one's organization" use ever would become the predominant way some commercial entity used some GPL software package. I think they would classify that as a hole that needs fixing.

Edit: of course, I may be overlooking that such cases already exist, or that the FSF discussed this (I did browse the GPL FAQ to check the latter, but did not spell it out)

As a side note -- can anyone here shed light as to what the GPL says with regard to developing code based on the GPL within your organization? I mean, I would want my employees to NOT necessarily go and publish intermediate stages to the world or share them with my competitors. But then again, I am restricting my employees' freedom to do so, through a non-compete contract or something else. Is this compatible with the GPL? I guess this hinges on whether the employee installing a copy of the code in their development environment counts as "distribution". Does it?

In the business world, saddling yourself with higher support costs and lost productivity from lower-quality software would hardly be considered liberating. The quality issue is still relevant.

Well yea, but I am assuming that free software advocates are ADVOCATING for free software -- so if they call it liberating software, their task will be much much easier.

IMHO , changing names will create confusion among naive users. Example openoffice-> Libere office. We have been using the term "Free software" for years.

Yes, and people still don't know what it stands for.

That should've been a wakeup call for free and open software advocates since at least 10 years ago..

EXACTLY!!!!!!!

Software quality is absolutely orthogonal with software freedom. Did I misss something or is your comment irrelevant?

Software quality, documentation, testing is tedious and non-sexy for the most part. Because contributors to free software projects don't have to behave like customer facing pros they, for the most part, don't and you end up with poor UIs, non existent documentation and inadequate testing. The few exceptions (like GCC) merely underline how shoddy and amateurish much of the rest is.

So in a definitional sense they may be orthogonal issues, in a practical sense they most certainly are not.

Some free software is part of a commercial product, and is usually very well documented and reliable. Think WebKit, Firefox, Rails, and Google's many open source contributions.

Yes, and that just reinforces what I said. Free software done by pros is, mostly, done to professional standards, that done by amateurs is mostly done to amateurish standards.

What defines a professional or amateur, though? If you define a professional as someone that contributes to software as part of their paid work (and an amateur as anyone else), then Linux and GCC were both begun by amateurs, and are now maintained partly by professionals. Likewise, many projects are begun by professionals and receive contributions from amateurs.

That depends on whether you consider freedom in itself to be a quality or not, and if you do, how much weight you give to the freedom quality.

Then, the question is whether a certain proprietary software as enough other qualities to make up for the missing quality of freedom.

Also, freedom is not a pure ethical quality. It means greater independence as well as freedom of action, which both can be very valuable (in dollars), for companies even more then for single users.