Interesting indeed.
I vote for using terms that define our values, not neutral ones.
Personallyq, I'm an activist, not an user. I want to spread my values, not rely on neutral term just "to reach" more people. If I reach more pople in the process, that's OK, but not a priority for me as free/libre software activist. I don't care for the "quantity" of people I reach for, I care for the "quality" of my message and the "quality" of my activism.
I also try to copy/transport/mimic my personal values in my projects or in the projects I contribute to, so that I'm always "nitpicking" by mentioning the importance of free/libre software *philosophy* over time --- over and over when I have the chance, time and patience to do so.
If however, I feel that I'm in an environment/project where it mainly focuses on "open source" (no matter if they use terms such as "fre/libre software" or "open source"), despite also doing the same thing as described in the previous paragraph, I sometimes feel less motivated to continue working on that project or tend to take/view the project's product/result with a grain of salt.
Finally, Stallman also states ([1]) that supporters/followers/proponents --- and projects supporting/following --- free/libre software *philosophy* should avoid both "FOSS" (because of the misleading "free" part which reminds people of "gratis") and "FLOSS" (because it's too neutral).
[1] http://audio-video.gnu.org/video/2015-10-24--rms--free-software-and-your-freedom--seagl--speech.ogv (under CC BY-SA 4.0).
Matthias Kirschner mk@fsfe.org writes:
Hello all,
I thought you might be interested in that blog post: http://k7r.eu/2-percent-discussion-free-software-or-open-source-software/
Scott Peterson from Red Hat this week published an article "Open Source or Free Software". It touches on a very important misunderstanding; people still believe that the terms "Open Source Software" and "Free Software" are referring to different software: they are not! Scott asked several interesting questions in his article and I thought I share my thoughts about them here and hopefully provoke some more responses on an important topic.
Would be interested in your views.
Regards, Matthias