Re: better terminology to promote freedom

[Aaron Wolf]

Hi Leah, my talk from Saturday focused a lot on the question of 
terminology, though I didn't get into this specific topic more than a 
little.

Freedom as a noun is good, "software freedom"

But for adjective, I like FLO for Free/Libre/Open. It's not just a junk 
term, it writes and pronounces nicely. The sound being like "flow" is 
fine, that connotation fits.

More on that at
https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/free-libre-open

It's definitely not about being ideologically neutral, it's about strong 
care about all the political principles.

I also agree that "proprietary" is ineffective in a lot of ways. But 
your critique is a bit off. Proprietary *does* mean property. It's an 
adjective for property. And I'd argue that we don't "own" free software 
copies, we own computer devices, and those devices can have whatever 
patterns of bits. What non-free licenses do is they tell us that we are 
legally blocked from freely using our own computing devices. I think we 
would do well to focus on that type of ownership and not ownership of 
software.

Ownership of software really means ownership of copyright. And when we 
have a free software license, we are legally licensed under the owner's 
copyright, and the license grants us all the freedoms.

But this doesn't resolve how to better talk about proprietary software.

If we go with FLO, then we can say non-FLO. And one thing I like about 
that is that it makes FLO the default. But I'd prefer a stronger term.

In my talk, I focused on the economics of abundant vs scarce and open vs 
exclusive. And within the four types of goods, proprietary software is 
"club goods" which means abundant but exclusive. And it makes sense to 
use that language maybe.

Proprietary software is "exclusive club-goods software" or maybe 
"exclusive software". And if people ask, "what do you mean it's 
exclusive, anyone can get it", the answer is, "it's exclusive to those 
who accept the ads, the terms and restrictions, and/or pay the license 
fee; that's how you join the exclusive club!" Or in some cases, it's 
"access and use of the software isn't exclusive, but the rights to share 
and to adapt the software is exclusively reserved, so you don't have 
those freedoms. That's why it's still a form of exclusive software."

Some people won't mind that software is exclusive, but there's no simple 
word that can explain what's wrong without explaining why software 
freedom matters.

And as long as we talk about the exclusive club, we can also emphasize 
that there are certain people who set and change the rules for the club, 
that it's not democratic.

With this language, we are making it clear to people how to think about 
their RELATIONSHIP to the software and the software providers and the 
economics of it.

All that said, I think "restricted software" is FINE, that's a good 
option and superior to "proprietary" for most cases.

My inclination at this point is actually to prefer "restricted software".

So, I think it's good to have two terms that can be presented as 
opposing. "FLO software" and "restricted software" works well IMO.

Best,
Aaron Wolf

On 2022-03-20 17:06, Leah Rowe via libreplanet-discuss wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Mar 2022 00:58:35 +0100
> Valentino Giudice <valentino.giudice96@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I've heard "freedom software" too, but it's slightly weird. Surely
> > "freedom-respecting software" conveys the idea, but it is longer and,
> > I believe, less prone to being treated as a "technical" term with an
> > objective definition and a common understanding (which is useful when
> > the term ends up in the law).
> >
> > Why not "libre software"? It's already common, it's easily understood
> > by any English-speaking person (because they will know "liberty") and
> > better translates to other languages.
>
> Well, "libre" is great too, but I get the impression that not all
> English speakers understand its meaning when they first see it. It's
> largely a translation of words from other languages.
>
> The term "freedom" is well-understood by English speakers, and it is
> mostly unambiguous. Also, many people know English as a second or third
> language and in such cases, the word is still well-understood.
>
> I'm sceptical about the term "libre", just because it's not the default
> word in English-speaking countries (freedom is the default word, for
> the intended meaning we wish to convey).
>
>
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