Re: better terminology to promote freedom

[Preston Miller Firestone]

TL;DR: Testing search terms related to "free software" in duckduckgo"

This is a really interesting experiment. I tried searching several
variations on "free software" with duckduckgo; here are some summaries
of the first-page results, followed by some of my thoughts:

"free software" returned results recommending software that we would
call "gratis", like Photoshop Express, right next to software we would
call "free", like the GNU image manipulation program. Most of the other 
results are focused on software that can be downloaded without
paying, rather than software that respects the user's freedom. A
noteable exception on the first page is sourceforge, but their result
says "free open source software".

"freedom software" returns a few software products with "freedom" in
their name, but near the bottom of the first page is a link to the
Software Freedom Law Center's home page.

"software freedom" returns results including the GNU project, the Software
Freedom Conservancy, the Software Freedom School, and the Software Freedom
Law Center.

"open source" returns what you'd expect: sourceforge.com,
opensource.org, and several blog posts telling what open source software
is (including one from IBM) or listing the top N open source programs.

"libre software", again, returns software with "libre" in the name
(libreoffice, libreCAD), and the Spanish version of gnu.org. Duckduckgo
also proposes the wikipedia page for "free software" beside the search
results.

I think that Leah is correct that "free software" is usually interpreted
as "gratis". I, for one, spent years searching "free software" or "free
version of [program]" before I ever learned about the free software
movement. Indeed, I only found out about our movement through the open
source movement's marketing! On the other hand, "free software", to
those in the know, means something very specific; it's not worth
abandoning almost four decades of work because of an unfortunate
ambiguity. Indeed, "freedom" has become something of a shibboleth for
me: if the program isn't described as "free", I'll avoid using it.

Thanks for reading,

Preston