> Tens of millions of people around the world now use free software; the public schools of some regions of India and Spain now teach all students to use the free GNU/Linux operating system. Most of these users, however, have never heard of the ethical reasons for which we developed this system and built the free software community, because nowadays this system and community are more often spoken of as “open source,” attributing them to a different philosophy in which these freedoms are hardly mentioned.

So much of Stallman’s writing gets bogged down in an apparent need to be credited. “GNU/Linux” and “free software” are prevalent examples. At this point it sounds pedantic, as if he cares more about the name (and being acknowledged) than the philosophy. By his own admission, the practical difference is minute. It doesn’t require over three thousand words of rambling.

> In practice, open source stands for criteria a little looser than those of free software. As far as we know, all existing released free software source code would qualify as open source. Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exceptions.

Ideas are separate from communication, and Stallman does a subpar job on the latter. The Free Software Foundation should consider someone else as its representative. Or at least get him an editor.