On 08/10/2012 01:09 AM, Ivan Shmakov wrote:
[There were a few points raised, or hinted at, in planning-ru@, which I think may demand a wider audience. Below comes the first one.]
It was observed that the Software Freedom Day is more than just occasionally called “Free Software Day” in Russian — a difference that's a bit hard to notice given that it's only a matter of suffix (or, rather, ending) there:
“День /свободы/ программного обеспечения” (Software Freedom)
vs.
“День /свободного/ программного обеспечения” (Free Software.)
It doesn't help that the “Free Software” variant of the name is used by certain teams (more or less consistently) since at least 2007 [1] (though “Software Freedom” appears since 2004 [2].)
[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. It's said that it's the /user/ freedom that's at stake; and as it's Free Software that frees the user, the Day should be called after it.
It should be mentioned that French and Ukrainian Wikipedia articles for SFD are seemingly titled after “Free Software”, too (though I'm by no means fluent in these languages):
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journée_du_logiciel_libre http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/День_Вільного_ПЗ
Any comments?
TIA.
Hi! Before this goes any further the name of the day is indeed Software Freedom Day and not Free Software Day as it is a day to promote Free AND OPEN Source Software. Now we (SFI/DFI) will never venture into official translations and let local teams translate the way which makes sense for them and their event. If some prefer to only promote Free Software, so be it. It's a shame they would miss out talking about Firefox for example, which surely is a piece of software some Windows users at their event might have heard of (or event be using without knowing it is Open Source). And this gives me the opportunity to remind that the day is geared toward reaching out to people who are not familiar with Free And Open Source Software. I would keep any similar debate as far away from the event as possible in order to avoid making those potential new user confused and feel FOSS is complicated (and that we don't even agree with each others). In French it's a non issue as there is only "logiciel libre". In English I have always found that the expression Free Software and the word Freedom associated with Software is confusing to people not in the know. I can truly understand why some people had issues selling "Free Software" ("didn't you say it was free?" "ah..."). Besides since I've been living in non-English speaking countries I have always found that people tend to think Open Source is Free Software. So excluding Open Source Sofware would be a very stupid move as we would be denying half of the world (at least) a celebration of the software they love to use and want to share with everyone else. SFI and SFD is an inclusive celebration and should remain that way. I hope I have addressed your questions. Thanks. Fred