Marcos Marado <mindboosternoori@gmail.com> writes: On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Ivan Shmakov <oneingray@gmail.com> wrote:
“День /свободы/ программного обеспечения” (Software Freedom)
vs.
“День /свободного/ программного обеспечения” (Free Software.)
[1] http://www.linux.org.ru/news/opensource/2135552 [2] http://www.linux.org.ru/news/sco/642283#comment-642440
The proponents of the “Free Software” variant argue that “software freedom” is as much a nonsensical notion as “software slavery” is.
Well, this e-mail points to some links, but fails to substantiate this sentence pointing to such a link.
There was a discussion in planning-ru@, started with [3] (“… software cannot be neither free nor enslaved — simply because software lacks freedom of will and possibility of a choice…”; translation's mine.) The concerns were also raised in the comments to [4] (“… Personally, I'm against the freedom for tools, be it an axe, a hammer, or a program…”; translation's mine.) [3] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.foss.sfd.planning.ru/65 [4] http://linux.org.ru/news/conference/7969998
I've never heard of this, but I'm 100% positive that “free software” as it is used — even in their name! — by “Free Software Foundation” isn't to represent a “nonsensical notion”, but to talk about software that is free. *Free Software* is “software in freedom”, “software freedom” is the whole concept — of which every free software is a practical example.
The issue at hand is that, somehow, there're those who reject “software freedom” (as a particular wording), while still accepting “free software.” Please also note that I'm not taking sides on this. I'm fine with either name, and my primary concern is that the use of different names could lead to a Swiftian “Little-Endian” vs. “Big-Endian” conflict of some sort.
More about what is free software here:
Note: while this is the case at least in English and in Portuguese, there might be a linguistic “trick” regarding this words in Russian, even if I don't think so.
Neither do I. Nevertheless, Russian Wiktionary lists “рабство” (“slavery”) as an antonym for “свобода” (“freedom”), while English Wiktionary doesn't seem to do the same. Perhaps, there's indeed something to do with the interlingual differences? -- FSF associate member #7257 http://sf-day.org/