[wilhelmtux-discussion] Re: World Summit on the Information Society and Free Software

[Manfred.Morgner at gmx.net]

Hallo Claude,

calling 'free software' 'open source' does not match the properties of free
software. But it matches the marketing strategy of some great players.

A strong, ever lasting point of discussion is:

If M$ opens his source for interesting (not interested) customers, is this
'open source' software?

In our podium discussion with M$ about document formats, shortly in Zurich,
one man asked, if it has any meaning, that M$ shows the WXP-Source to some
people and if in this case WXP is a kind of 'open source' software.

If the people around you believe, that 'open source' is the same as 'free
software' you are running strange discussion. I answered, that showing any
source to some people is irrelevant, it's more a good marketing trick and has no
practical meaning. The M$ people become aggressiv about this answer, but the
discussion leader stopped this discussion (this was correct).

I agree - understanding what free software is, is not easy. But I'm
convienced, if we speak about 'free software' as 'open software' we will lose.

If I speak about 'free software' with our managers (at work), I always
correct them if they speak about it as 'open source' software. In most cases it's
enought to tell them, that there are significant differences between 'open
source' and 'free software'. Sooner or later they will understand (or accept or
believe), that there is realy a difference, even if they don't understand it
in detail. At this point you are able to speak about 'open source' (as WXP
may be) and 'free software' and the nontechs will understand, you' r speaking
about two different things. Again - even if they don't understand what the
differences are.

Imagine - you'r working to convience any goverment or management to use
'open source' software. You spent a lot of time and work to reach you'r goal.
After you'r work they will believe in 'open source' software. An now M$
intruduces there 'open source program', showing those people any source, name this
'the source of wxp': All you'r work is lost, all the time you spent is robbed
from you by a manufacturer of 'proprietary software' only by declaring it as
'open source' software.

If this happens, we finally have lost. You have no chance anymore to correct
this 'little detail'.

The only way to prevent us from those situations is, to clearly separate
'free software' from 'open source' in any discussion anywhere.


Even after my activities in introducing 'free software' to the
IT-to-schools-project of my city was not completely successfull - meanwhile I had
discussions with people from the project and currently it looks like we will install
a experimental server based on GNU/Linux. If this installation will succeed,
the complete server environment will become based on 'free software'. This is
realy a success, because using a 'free software' based server environment
will open the door to use a lot of server based applications give a prove, that
free software is able to do anything a school ever needs. And it surely will
open the door for 'free software' on the desktop.

During my work in this project, I alway spoke about 'free software' and
explained that there realy is a difference between this and 'open soucre'. These
people now almost speak about 'free software' (at least with me) and they
developed a feeling what this means. And now it is easy to tell them that
SuSE-Linux is not completely free software and they understand, that this is a
problem that affects them and that this does matter.

Accepting, that 'open source' means anything other than 'free software' is
not a question of technical knowledge. For nontechs, it's also possible to
simply accept it if they trust you or if they recognize, that "the experts" only
talk about 'free software' and 'open source' is a growing marketing domain
for manufacturers of 'proprietary software'.

Sorry if it was boring, but I needed to say this.

Greetings,
Manfred.


> I have a hunch that in Switzerland,  people in favor of "non proprietary"
> software prefer using "open Source" because Swiss decision-makers get
> their
> knickers in a twist when they hear the word "free". I got this hunch from
> the intersessional documents for WSIS (1). Rumor had it that the authors
> had
> scrapped all mentions of "free software", but actually "Open Source"
> software has a relevant place in them. So using the words "Open Source"
> might just be a way to get the principle through to our powers that be,
> who
> are rather ICT-illiterate.
> 
> As Declan McCullagh entitled a round table last summer in New York, during
> the H2O2 meeting: "Trying to teach legislators about tech is about as
> useful
> as teaching a pig how to write: all you get is a very angry pig... but
> there
> are other way to influence them" (quoted from memory). It also applies to
> other organs in public administration. This playing on words might be one
> of
> them.
> 
> 
> (1) See
>
http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/listing.asp?lang=en&c_event=pci|1&c_type=t
> d| The URL happens to work today, though it didn't a few days ago. If it
> doesn't again: http://www.itu.int/wsis/ and click on "Working documents
> for
> the Draft Declaration of Principles and Draft Action Plan as of 21 March
> 2003 "
> 
> ;-)
> 
> Claude

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