Re: better terminology to promote freedom

[Jean Louis]

* Preston Miller Firestone via libreplanet-discuss 
<libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> [2022-03-23 17:22]:
> TL;DR: Testing search terms related to "free software" in
> duckduckgo"

As Duckduckgo recently clearly stated that they can and will
manipulate specific search terms to be lower ranked than it should be;
I can't say that this search engine is behaving ethically and that it
can be used as ethical standard for these measures you presented.

> "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".

When presenting results of an URL, then I recommend to post the URL
itself.

There is also difference if you used terms

- [free software] with quotes 

or 

- [free software] without quotes

Here is one example for "free software" with quotes:
https://searx.tiekoetter.com/search?q=%22free+software%22

And I get 5 examples of "free software" as in the definition from free
software philosophy, while other examples are not relevant. 

Though my result is quite different from your above described result,
I did not get any information about Photoshop Express for example.

In general I don't think you or we shall rely on automated search
engines to give us some standards of how words should be used.

Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/