On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 12:53:45AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
Probably this is enough language games for now. As long as we all agree that the important things to communicate are the freedoms, we can disagree over the best ways to do that.
Going back to the original message, the issue was how to translate "free software" and "open source" into French. Regardless of the correctness of those terms or the convenience to replace them by others, there are historic documents that talk about one, the other or both. Obviously, the two terms should not be translated identically, or you will end up with translated documents that make no sense (those that talk about the differences of the two movements).
A fact that we have to live with is that a word that has several meanings in one language cannot be translated by another word that has exactly the same meanings in the other language. Therefore, I think "logiciel libre" is a good translation of "free software" and "sources ouvertes" or something else should be used to translate "open source".
Regards, Jaime