Shane M. Coughlan wrote:
I believe Ben made a good point; the Linux kernel developers have done a lot of good work to bring Free Software to more people. Some of them do this using the term 'open source' rather than Free Software. Perhaps we can generalise and say that some people referring to 'open source' are worried that the term Free Software is too strong.
While what Ben said is true, the goals of our Movement are not entirely technical and I'd say that the technical aspects are secondary. In the beginning of the 80's, RMS thought that everyone would choose to use Free Software, if there was a way to escape from non-free software. That assumption proved to be wrong: people generally don't value their freedom and prefer not to pay much attention.
I must admit with regret that while the proponents of the Open Source campaign are contributing a lot in technical form, they make our job much harder and spreading their "philosophy" is against our goals. A disturbing tendency is that nearly everyone that joins the community (as a user or contributor, or both) shares their views. I fear that the Free Software Movement is being absorbed by the utilitary thinking of these people, and part of the reasons is that that's what they aim -- some of them hope that our philosophy will be forgotten.
It's important to remember that we are all traveling along the same road.
It's important to remember that there is a deep abyss between us and them -- we want to change the society and they want technical excellence. It is useless to drive faster if we can't stay on the road -- and our road is the Freedom Road, not the Not-so-free Open-sourced Highway.
Ben suggested that we discuss why the new GPL license is a good idea.
The purpose of the GPLv3 conferences was specifically this -- to explain to the people that have doubts why the next version will do its job better, that is, will protect users' freedom better. By reading that article I conclude that none of its authors listened to the speeches or read the transcripts.
Why don't we devote a little time to that?
It is pointless to do that, I'm afraid. These people can't be persuaded in our cause and it's just a waste of time and efforts to even attempt to do that -- it will be ignored. Their moto, inspired by their leader, is "Ideology sucks".
I see two major drawbacks that result from their decision not to switch to GPLv3:
* It is a loss for everyone in the community. The Linux kernel won't be protected by the additional clauses in the new version of the license.
* Since the Linux kernel project is influential in the community, the FUD they spread will reach other projects and developers, and many of them will adopt their "conclusions".
What we can do is to apply Ben's idea to other projects that intend to follow Linus Torvalds' views in this respect. The situation with the Linux kernel is hopeless, IMHO.