as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

I limit my engagement with the FOSS community for precisely these reasons. The Proprietary/FOSS Spectrum is not binary, although some people take a bizarrely puritanical attitude towards closed-source software.

I find that there is a great temptation to release software as free (as in beer) rather than under GPL or LGPL because I know that the interaction with end users is going to be less stressful.

I know from experience that the majority of negative feedback I receive on an OSS project will be non-constructive, off-topic, or just plain wrong - but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. I get comments like "Why didn't you use method x to do y?" and "Dependency X is closed source, so I don't want to use it"

Conversely, when I release a closed source product I get much less feedback, but the feedback is usually valuable. People say things like "Can I have feature X" and "It breaks when I do Y, any ideas?"

I always feel that this is a shame, because I want to give to the community. In reality, I often don't contribute because I don't want to deal with the extra hassle of dealing with OSS purists and method-trolls.

My incredibly shambolic and poorly constructed point is that you are not alone in your feelings of wanting to be slightly dissociated from the OSS community. In the software community bus, there is no shame in changing seats to be slightly further away from creepy guy with the eyes that say "Helter Skelter" and the pamphlets explaining why 11:11 is time prompt of the Spirit Guardians.

Main reason I stopped using identi.ca was people having a pop at me _constantly_ in the name of some kind of constructive feedback to the Ubuntu project. When in fact it was not that, it was whiny tardish bullshit. I have a limited amount of brain capacity and time, and I discovered fairly recently that I don't have enough to go round.

Something had to give. People criticising me in the name of Free Software were the first against the wall. You absolutely, positively cannot turn people who are that hell bent on making your life a misery round.

Fuck em.

The reason I ONLY have a Twitter account, and have never considered an Identi.ca account, is that the value of a social network is in the people using it (i.e. the "social network" part), and if I was an Identi.ca user I wouldn't be able to read interesting things from people who only use Twitter.

It sounds a lot like I made the right choice, not just on quantity terms, but on quality terms too.

Hi. Great post. As the one who started the identi.ca thread, I apologize for the "bollocking" it turned into. My original post names both you and Jono as part of the FLOSS community, which is clearly true. I found that the podcast really did highlight the problems with non-free web services since every service on the top 10 list was non free and are used by two prominent members of the FLOSS community. My top 10 list would have been very similar and I often go out of my way to avoid nonfree software. By the time I came back from lunch, the "bollocking" was over and I had little hope of clearing up my original intent.

As somebody who has recieved a similar, in-person, bollocking because I was moving people from a 100% nonfree platform to a 99.99% free platform (ubuntu) and not to gnewsense, I really do feel that the "all or nothing" nature of many in the free software world is unacceptable.

I have experienced similar to you on different services. Almost weekly for over 5 years we get someone posting an angry rant on the Ubuntu Forums (where I serve as an admin) about "Ubuntu isn't totally free" or "why do the forums use proprietary software". It gets old quickly.

I too got sick of the dogpiling and just don't hang out there ... luckily such things are easily avoidable.

Everyone defines their own choices, and no-ones choice is better or worse than anyone else's. The problem here is when someone believes they are more self-righteous than the other and that their choice is better considered and informed. I absolutely believe in sharing our beliefs, but under the firm banner of politeness and respect. The problem is that some of these folks are unwilling to accept and respect people who have made different choices. In those cases it is borderline extremism, and John Cleese sums it up best at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLNhPMQnWu4 :-)

Don't let them get to you. They are just voices on the Internet spinning the same record.

I don't think this is necessarily a problem with identi.ca or _all_ the people that support free software. In any situation you end up with a vocal minority who are loud and abusive in the name of something or other. Identi.ca naturally attracts people with a skew towards free software. Given that you are all members of the free and open source community, it's likely that you would see a lot of the spray directed towards conversations your involved in, or topics that your associated with. Many of these people aren't on twitter because of the nature of the platform. I imagine if you were someone like Paris Hilton on twitter, i imagine you would get a bollocking on a regular basis. On Identi.ca I feel that most people probably wouldn't care what she was doing. Those kinds people are on every service, they are just spouting off on other topics. I used to be one of those people a few years back, but within any community, you grow up and realise that your message isn't coming through the way you intended and you change.

I think identi.ca is valuable. That value may not lie in the public timeline for some people.

FWIW I don't think anyone who really understands free software community doubts your contribution to free software.

BTW this is all popey's fault! =)

Comparing free software advocacy to racism?

Condemned.

Your contribution to Open source through your efforts with LUG radio cannot be denied by anyone with half a braincell and you've continued this stream now with SOJ. Anyone who dismisses your "Loyalty to opensource"(Whatever the fuck that means...When did we become a religous movement?) obviously has not listened to and/or read any of your work, or if they have they have focused on one statement or concept and ignored all the rest.

"Linux format magazine" got me into linux, shows like LUG radio,Tux radar,Linux outlaws and Shot of Jaq have kept me interested and up to date with linux. This contribution alone is what helps keep Open Source growing, and thats only a the tip of the ice berg of what yourself and many others have done.

Keep up the good work man.

Is it that I've just become more involved or has this kind of thing become more ... potent(?)... recently?

It's okay Langridge, we still love you.

Even RMS is involved with people who work for proprietary software companies. Remember the GNU utilities running on Solaris (back when closed), AIX, HP-UX? He fully supported the people working on the utilities even when they worked for Sun, IBM, et al. He thought it unfortunate that they worked for those companies and encouraged them to work for free software companies (of which there was only one success at the time). But he never pilloried them. Disagreed strongly with some, but always with carefully reasoned arguments that don't fit in 140c.

I don't like Ubuntu's highest-level governance (there's this tale about arch...), but I'm not against its employees. I don't like MS's governance, either, but I have plenty of friends there, and they do good work in free software.

The people who attack anyone attached to proprietary services seem incapable of encouraging the good aspects, and that's a shame. But they do not represent everyone. Many of us walk the line between 100% free and chunks o' proprietary shame. I'm using Adobe's flash player to watch the World Cup, for instance. No one's jumped on me for that... (You could ask @fabsh what he's using...)

Stuart, I can understand what made you upset. I remember that only two weeks ago the Linux outlaws had a special show about android, and @fabsh recommended propriety apps. I think some Identi.ca users trashed him, so maybe he had a need to pass it on... On the other hand I don't think he ever said that anyone should boycott propriety software. His ideology is just being impolite to everyone in a random fashion. When I read the complete thread in identi.ca, I see that there are various opinions represented, and some people even change their minds on some issues. So sure, you got some beating, and much of the arguments were rather stupid, but it wasn't a one-sided argument. Please don't throw the baby out with the bath water. It is true that many of identi.ca's users are more jealous than the average free software user, but regardless of some users ideology, I think that ideti.ca (or rather status.net) is an important free software. Even those who use only Twitter should be happy that there is an open alternative. I use Twitter because it lets me get good content from interesting people, in the same way that I use MS Office because some (read: all) people send me doc files that I want or need to read. Still, when I write I prefer to use OpenOffice. well, at this point I don't remember what my point was, so I'll just stop here.

If something is written, say, an app, that is open, save for one piece, which is necessary for its functionality, then I don't think it is open. So what, though? I like the OSS philosophy, generally speaking, but I can't say that I am such a zealot that I would condemn something that was mostly free but still required some non-free components which greatly increase the functionality.

Basically, I am with Linus on this. Look at these things pragmatically. FLOSS is important enough, to me, that I want it to flourish. To that end it needs to keep people, not drive them away, for it grow, or even to be a serious factor. Part of that, however, does require a certain amount of zealotry, IMHO. If all people were more socially minded then such zealotry does nothing but that is not the case. Zealots(Stallman/Gates) provide balance which contributes to a rich environment of ideas. They get people passionate about something. Basically, as I see, the zealots are the massive objects who, initially, draw-in like minded and that provides the nucleus of a movement. For a movement to survive, generally, it ends up moving a bit more to the mainstream, and, by pragmatically doing so, the movement can bring the mainstream a bit towards itself.

If something is written, say, an app, that is open, save for one piece, which is necessary for its functionality, then I don't think it is open. So what, though? I like the OSS philosophy, generally speaking, but I can't say that I am such a zealot that I would condemn something that was mostly free but still required some non-free components which greatly increase the functionality.

Basically, I am with Linus on this. Look at these things pragmatically. FLOSS is important enough, to me, that I want it to flourish. To that end it needs to keep people, not drive them away, for it grow, or even to be a serious factor. Part of that, however, does require a certain amount of zealotry, IMHO. If all people were more socially minded then such zealotry does nothing but that is not the case. Zealots(Stallman/Gates) provide balance which contributes to a rich environment of ideas. They get people passionate about something. Basically, as I see, the zealots are the massive objects who, initially, draw-in like minded and that provides the nucleus of a movement. For a movement to survive, generally, it ends up moving a bit more to the mainstream, and, by pragmatically doing so, the movement can bring the mainstream a bit towards itself.

Ignore the zealots (on both sides) and keep working towards a solution somewhere in the middle. I respect the Free software folks in fighting for something they believe in but I have no tolerance for their prejudice. There is a more general "battle" going on than Free software vs. proprietary software; that is individual power vs. corporate/business power. Currently our (USA) society heavily favors the corporate/business side and the ideal solution would be one that stimulate freedom and prosperity not one or the other.

Thanks for the great post.

> Everyone defines their own choices, and no-ones choice is better or worse than anyone else's.

A tangent: I don't think any of us are actually moral relativists, so this doesn't make sense. Many choices are objectively ethically worse than many other choices, and I think we should praise the people who behave well and criticize the people who behave badly (being careful to avoid hypocrisy or self-righteousness).

So, instead of the above, I'd say "It's very hard to work out which choices are ethical, so we should always be tolerant of people who have made mildly different ethical decisions to us, and be willing to operate on the understanding that their ethical analysis of the situation simply gave a slightly different answer, and this doesn't mean they aren't trying to be good people."

Going back on-topic, I wonder if the GPL itself encourages this social behavior. If you write code that is not quite free, the "GPL society" can't use it at all; it might as well be proprietary. Maybe this starts to explain why people seem to be *more* hostile towards other free software supporters who behave in mildly-non-free ways than they are towards actual proprietary software developers?

-- cjb.

As I see it, there are a few things going on here.

1. You spent years on LugRadio banging the drum of Free software where ever possible. As I recall you even avoided the binary blobs needed to run a wireless card on your laptops.

2. Canonical has spent years banging the drum of Free software and how its the right thing to do. Their first major product under the Canonical banner, Launchpad, was closed source. They came out early and said that they would open source it when the time was right and eventually did so. (After a period of time and cleaning up the code to make it ready for the public. If open sourcing the code was the intent, why wasn't the code written with that in mind?)

3. The next major web project Canonical came out with was Ubuntu One. A closed source web application with no notices from them that it will be released as an open source project. Additionally they took the name Ubuntu, a brand the community helped build as a Free software project where ever possible while being pragmatic and allowing closed source where no Free option existed. Canonical, not an outside company that does not understand Free software, built the application closed source. To many, including myself, they taking of the name and applying it to an inhouse closed source app says in big flashing words that they have no faith in the open source methods of building software and apps. Its great to use free software but making money on it is not possible so build it closed if you want to profit.

4. You are getting the kicking in this case because you flew the Free software banner all those years, go to work for a company that promotes Free software and you produce closed source software. You gotta admit that it looks like you (and Canonical) by your actions don't believe in Free software as much as you claim by your words.

All of the above being said, understand this about me. I am not putting you down for what you do. You have made your choices and I assume you sleep well at night. I don't care if a person or company produces open or closed source software.

I just think that if you're going to promote Free software as the right way to do things then choose to produce closed source when it comes time to make a profit, your motives and convictions can and will be called into question.

You are not alone in your point of view. Let people like this drown in their own poison.

If only it were so simple. Unfortunately, such people go a good distance toward drowning the community, but subjecting messages on mailing lists to such irrelevant litmus tests, by attacking people rather than positions, and by dividing folks who should be working together.

Don't worry, we get a mega shit load of them commented on OMG! Ubuntu! whenever we mention Docky or anything written in Mono....

.... or try to pimp our Facebook page.

NO YOU CANTZ USE FACEBOOKZ GUYZ THEYRE EVIL AND SHIT.

In a perfect world we have the opportunity to listen to both sides producing qualified arguments, but when it becomes a battle to produce something that is to the best parts free to use, free to adopt, free to circulate and free to contribute thought and direction to... It then becomes a bit of a sticking point when you get attacked by people who take the fun out of fundamentalism.

We respect their point of view, indeed critical input often validates design expression or direction if you're a software maintainer however I've long since learnt to foster a deep mistrust of people who can use a compiler but can't use soap. Do I mean the detergent or the protocol ? That is open to interpretation.

Lots of long and thoughtful comments out there but I think it comes down to the fact that I've now come to a conclusion on.

There are just too many dickheaded c$£ts on the internet to be worried about them all.

I think you are doing a great job and that you should not care too much what fabsh or bkuhn or other are saying, because they are just over the top sometimes. There are many very nice and helpful people on identi.ca, but unfortunately they are not as vocal as some of the only-freedom-in-the-way-I-say guys.

Fake Steve Jobs summed it up in one word when he described these people as 'Freetards'.

I like free software. I use Kubuntu as the OS in my machine. I use lots of free software and encourage others to try them. But in my laptop I have a proprietary video driver and a wireless driver because they work better. At office I get connected to a proprietary mail server. The freedom should not only be in the software, it should be available for people to enjoy as well.

To me the problem isn't so much support of proprietary software, it's hypocrisy. Ubuntu One for example is closed and shouldn't be named after "humanity to others". I use closed source software myself, but I wouldn't dare to try to call them open or free as in freedom.

Free software costs a lot of money to develop!!! If I was you I would post BS Alert to identi.ca: take a screenshot of the BS comment, slap big read BS caption on it and post to identi.ca =) see how britney spears is handling it =) http://www.britneyspears.com/2010/05/bs-alert-the-sun-britney-wants-to-be-frozen-after-her-death.php

And in case I gave the wrong impression, I *am* a zealot. I feel lousy using flash to watch the Cup. But I believe in engagement and somewhat tempering daily life to accommodate others.

This german has managed to annoy me so much so that i have stopped listening to linux outlaws. And I used to really enjoyed it. I wish people could stop beeing so fanatic about stuff(this goes out to the apple camp aswell).

I used to use Ubuntu back in the day. I found it hard to use but loved the open source ethos. My biggest problem is that Stallman is heralded by some as the messiah and that I found the people that offered to help me were also his fanboys. They would bash me on the forums for using Acrobat Reader or Photoshop under wine. As if running the software I wanted to run on My computer was some kind of crime against them. I decided that this wasn't an attractive community to want to join.

Because of my love of LugRadio I still follow the ex-presenter's blogs and the Shot of JAq.

But I managed to avoid the senseless grief and boring arguments by joining the Mac community. Sorry.

Don't let extremist get you down. I use the closed and open bits of Ubuntu at work and home. I appreciate what you and the entire Ubuntu community contribute. Rock on Stuart!

This is why I've been asking people to distantiate from the free software movement.

Their ideology has turned into a freakshow.

I hope that either from within or from outside the free software movement gets forked by a more reasonable set of ideals, principles, morals and most importantly people.

As long as this doesn't happen, I distantiate myself. I'm an opensource developer, absolutely not a free software developer.

So long and thanks for all the licenses, FSF. Now please get replaced.

In a word: "coreboot".

@Flimm:

Ubuntu One backend is eventually closed source, but the frontend is not..

But you know what...I estimate the total ammount of ICQ users inside our so called "opensource community" much higher then the users of the open source xmpp protocol.

Aq, calm down, don't let the morons byte you ;)

I am not sure why you think I have insulted you. I was expressing my feeling that (based on listening to you on LugRadio a while back) you have changed your viewpoint on free software somewhat in the last year or two. I am not sure if this is connected to you now being employed by Canonical now or not and I can't tell. All I can tell is that you were much more "freedom crusading" (as you guys used to put it) back in the LugRadio days than you are on Shot of Jaq. For whatever reason. Is this incorrect? If it is, I am sorry but I was merely stating my opinion. It is true that I voiced the opinion that Shot of Jaq might not be the ideal podcast to listen to if you value FaiF above everything else. Do you think that is not doing you guys justice? It was also just my opinion.

I am a bit disheartened that you did not provide a link to the actual conversation on identi.ca and instead make this look as if I just dumped on you for the sake of it or (as other people have asserted) to get more listeners for LO. That was not the case at all. I would have preferred you to discuss this on identi.ca as I am regularly discussing criticism of my show with people on there.

Just a minor last point regarding "in the identica thread mentioned above, I'm characterised as someone who helps Canonical produce proprietary net services": Aren't you working on Ubuntu One and is it not a proprietary web service? So isn't that statement true? And if it is, do you think web services are somehow in another class from other software and don't have to be as free software as the other stuff you support and evangelise? Or do you think that doing this just to put food on the table is OK?

These are not rhetorical questions. I am genuinely interested in your answers. I never had the intention to attack you, but yes, I was voicing clear criticism of your role on Shot of Jaq. I think that is only fair, as I am prepared to discuss the same kind of issues for myself any day.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've always felt that the only thing better than being publicly insulted by someone is being publicly insulted by someone who then proceeds to explain to you not only that he didn't actually insult you in the first place, but if he did, you'd be wrong to feel insulted, since the insult—if there'd beenone—would have been completely justified.

Lefty: Hell, I insulted you. I never said I didn't. You earned it after all. However, I never intended to insult Aq.

sorry that you had to take such a bashing. nobody deserves that.

ive noticed lately an upsurge in this kind of attack on people within the free software community, as if it were a mob-like mentality. there are way too many examples of this type of persecution throughout history to site here but ill leave that to the readers own capacity, openness (howd that get in here) and sense of empathy.

i use free software wherever i can and make a big effort to do so. there are times were i dont - like playing mp3s, using the internet, connecting other devices, while at work and sometimes (oh no) i use them all together (just trying to be practical). sometimes i even cross the linux distro war line and use ubuntu and fedora. id like to get an inventory from these free software purists to see if theyve got any non-free software mixed in with their free software or if they all work with free software all of the time. doubt it seriously.

surprised really that these free software purists even work in technology as they would be cognizant of the fact that most environments both home, work and business are a mix of free and non-free software. dont get me wrong, im committed to help get free software into the hands of all but i would be wrong if i took a stand to say that i only work with free software with the reality that non-free software is out there and sometimes i do work with it.

in the meanwhile ill be waiting on a full inventory from the free software purists :)

(posted on behalf of bkuhn by sil)

I think it is possible to support Free Software even while writing proprietary software for your day job. In fact, many of the early GNU developers did just that. But, it's important not to deny what the situation issue: using a day job funding working against Free Software so that you can hopefully make up the ground and then some at night.

AFAICT, UbuntuOne is basically that. It's slightly better than the early GNU situation, since UbuntuOne team does push some changes back into projects like CouchDB, and the client-side is Free Software.

As I told Jono in the aforementioned identica conversation, it's important to delineate actions taken by companies that are good for software freedom, those that are bad, and those that are neutral. Canonical does a little bad, a lot of neutral, and some good. UbuntuOne proprietary server is near the top of the bad list, so it may explain why you feel under fire because you're a leader of that project.

Thanks for that, Aq! I appreciate your response. I totally see what you mean and I support you in being annoyed by the kind of free software "zealots" you describe. I don't want to be associated with these people, however. I am in the last position to be one of them, in fact, as I happily use my PS3 and GMail every day and did in fact use an iPhone for two years just as happily. I support free software just a bit more vocally than you do, maybe to make up for the fact that I can't code on it nearly as much as you.

I think the one drop thing is a bad comparison because of the racist undertones and as a German I am especially conscious of those. I do, however believe that software is either FaiF or not. That is a very binary choice for me and yes, if one component is proprietary, I consider the whole to be non-free. It might be open source, but it certainly isn't free software. That is my interpretation and I'm totally happy for us to disagree on that. In fact, I think disagreeing is very important and discussing these kinds of issues can be a huge benefit. Isn't that why we do these shows after all?

I really did not want to insult you, if I did, I apologise. For me the whole discussion never was on a personal level. As people have pointed out, I have and continue to pick A LOT of proprietary software every week on LO and the same kind of people you are annoyed at give me shit for that. *Real* freedom zealots, people who actually don't use proprietary software themselves. I actually haven't listened to the Shot we talk about, I will remedy that soon, but I was just a bit disappointed that people keep using proprietary when there are actually BETTER free alternatives out there (ie. Twitter and identi.ca). From your post I've gathered that identi.ca isn't an alternative for you and I find that fascinating. I'd love to discuss that over a beer some time...

Anyway, all I'm trying to say is I didn't try to insult you and I apologise. Please do not lump me in with the people who really tried to annoy you because I really believe I am not one of them. Or at least I am trying very had not to be as that would be hypocrisy.

One more thing. Aq, I am also sorry that I accused you of not supporting free software anymore. You made it clear that I was wrong. I am actually glad about that, even if it caused this kerfuffle...

{{{{{ }}}}}

Stuart,

I've got to completely agree with you.

You've got to balance the two:

Extremism, in any form, for any cause, is completely wrong.

Bad things happen when Good Men do nothing.

It's good that you're pragmatism has brought to light a very important point. I know of one very large company that was considering helping with Open Source Development, and instead had to get their employees to use @gmail.com addresses - as contributions from their @corporate.com addresses were binned by the extreme pro-FOSS moderators.

That's not good in the short term, it's not good in the long term. There are FAR MORE IMPORTANT THINGS than software to get so blindly passionate about.

Great post. The world is full of zealots, is not only something you can see in the free software community. Fuck them. You don't have to apologize to them. You can use whatever the sites you want and whatever the software you want. You probably have done more contributions for the free software than most of them. Keep up the good work.

Ok so this is somewhat of a contery view.

The zelots have their place in the debate. Without the courage and conviction of people like RMS there would be no spectrum of choice. The fact that they coninually challengs us all in the degree to which we embarce the principals of free software is a good thing. Without them our freedom may have been limited to choosing a wallpaper picture for our desktop.

That there are pople to spend the time and effort to reverse engineer the closed file formats so that we can read a word document with FOSS software. Or to recreate the sofware to for video drivers where the company that makes them will not release the information. A pragmatic approch would not have got any of these fundemential parts of the echosystem done so that we can all use FOSS software in a pragmatic manner.

I'm rather pragmatic about this; is open source software great? Yes! Is closed source software great? It can be!

I generally prefer open source software, if I'm honest; if Application A and Application B have the exact same features, but B is open (or MORE open then A) then I'll go for that.

Same reason I use (and now pay for) Ubuntu One is because it is indeed more open then Dropbox.

I prefer Linux over Apple and Microsoft, yes, because it's more open, but also because it has a philosophy, whilst I do hope that Ubuntu One is made completely FOSS, I appreicate it in it's current state and seeing as how it's in the hands of a company I trust, I don't mind the lack of Complete FOSS so much.

The fact is that Ubuntu One is mostly FOSS and that is far better then no FOSS at all.

Now if I have to type FOSS again I'll scream ;)

Just please don't think that because there are a few extremeists out there that they account for all of us (though, admitadlly, they might be the most vocal)

Aq, for you to say that the server component of the UbuntuOne project is just one small part of the entire suite of software is an understatement at best if my understanding of it is correct.

My understanding is that in order to sync files/db/whatever between two desktops via UbuntuOne is that it must touch the UbuntuOne server first. Without the server UbuntuOne does nothing.

If I'm wrong here, please clarify how I might sync without going through the UbuntuOne server.

In my view, there's nothing wrong with identi.ca per se, to the contrary! Just make sure you don't get sucked into discussions that lead nowhere- simply stop following those people and replying to them. That's how I handle it, at least (except the one time I defended writing Free software in C# and ended up on the boycottnovell frontpage for being a Mono apologist or something, heh.)

Chris Ball and Stuart Ward said it best, imo.

It's quite annoying how much hypocrisy is coming from Canonical these days. They're building a distro that is decreasingly free and then get all whiny about it, when they get called out on this.

Comparing this to racism is ad hominem, and makes you no better than the targets of your criticism. You start off your blog post with a pity-seeking line like that and go on to compare this to one-drop? Ridiculous. Or is the RICO law racism too?

SMH

To be honest, I think that this problem runs deeper than free software and is indeed the reason why, despite being passionate about programming, open source etc. my friends from these communities are few and far between.

There seems to be an inherent need for a kind of snide one-upmanship in most 'geeks'. Sneering at new users, delighting in catching people making trivial mistakes (" I've seen him fight Chuck Norris in WAY of the Dragon ") etc. is so prevalent and I really don't know why, possibly because of inadequacy in other aspects of their lives?

Illegitimus non carborundum anyway mate - love the podcast(s), love Ubuntu One, keep doing both!

I think you confuse "free software" with "open source." I believe that you are receiving the negative reactions you dislike so much because you've co-opted the term "free software" behind which there are already strong feelings. You should probably more accurately use the term "open source software."

See, here's the thing. If I'm free to get a job, have a family, and own a house, but I'm not free to vote in my country's elections or sit where I want to on a public bus, am I really free? I don't think so, so I'm grateful to the American civil rights movements that resulted in my enjoying more freedom. Folks who position themselves behind the 'free software' movement feel similarly. A 95% free software system is not free enough, and looking at their beliefs and goals, it's really quite reasonable for them to feel that way.

I just don't understand why you don't avoid the problem entirely and use the more accurate, commercially-oriented "open source" term (or perhaps coin another?) instead of continuing to push fruitlessly on an overloaded term that quite obviously has a community vocally at odds with your beliefs and interpretations behind it.

Stuart, if your beliefs are at such odds with the 'free software' community then why do you care about them being marginalized?

It's simple: pick a better term, or suck it up and deal. Your choice! Just don't be surprised to continue getting flak when you peddle yourself as a 'free software' practitioner while very obviously being out-of-sorts with the ideals behind that specific movement.

being members of the free and open source community is great thing.

Here's an analagous situation: are the non-copyleft Free Software licenses good enough at preserving freedom and promoting Free Software?

To my mind, they absolutely are. However, there are those in the community who prefer that a Free Software license doesn't only preserve freedom but also promotes it. To these folks, the BSD license isn't good enough and I've had discussions where they've actually tried to argue that the BSD license isn't a Free Software license although it clearly meets the definition of a Free Software license and is acknowledged as such by the GNU project and RMS.

My belief is that the passion that some Free Software folks have inside leads them to understand that it's only sufficient to feel like you're doing Everything Possible to promote Free Software. Myself, I take the view that I don't need to promote it, it's good enough to preserve freedom and let others make their decisions by seeing how the freedom that I value has had a positive impact on my experience. I trust that the value of freedom becomes self-evident over time, and doesn't need me to advertise it.

For some, that kind of passive approach isn't enough, they want to promote Free Software, and that's great.

The problem that you've been describing, Aq, is definitely worded really well: it's the nuanced problem that someone else's passion which leads them to want to do Everything Possible to Promote Free Software sometimes leads them to understand and see that their attitude is different to mine. And then, instead of feeling united by the idea that I value freedom as much as them, they feel divided by the idea that I'm not compelled to promote Free Software in the same way as they are. So whereas I feel united with them in ideology, they feel divided from me.

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*facepalm* Did you compare being a jerk to being black in this article? I mean I know jerks tend to get a lot of grief online and not all of it needs to be nee-jerk. But I don't think segregation, raping and murdering of people based on their genes can quite compare. For a start, proportionally, you have a choice to not be a jerk in 1/100ths of your work on UbuntuOne... well maybe not.

All the other work you've done is quite, ok. Not my cup of tea, but it's progress.

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