Re: Hurd Mission Statement

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

On Monday, 8. June 2009 09:58:03 olafBuddenhagen@gmx.net wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 09:39:51AM +0200, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> > On Thursday, 4. June 2009 13:45:55 Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> > > And I just spotted something missing: The word "free" :)
>
> Well, not exactly hard to spot, considering that I explicitely mentioned
> leaving it out... ;-)

:) 

I thought it damn important, but read below for the reasons why I don't think 
so anymore... 

> > And adding these four letters suffices to tell them the essence
> > without relying on previous knowledge:
>
> I don't agree. People not familiar with GNU philosophy will either
> misread it, or ignore it alltogether.

Do you mean the free/gratis/libre part? 

I tend to forget about that... free has only one meaning in my mind ;) 

But you're right. That isn't true for most people, and those would be 
confused. And those who understand "free "also understand "GNU"... 

I just had that problem again today: 

me: "Is it free?" 
other: "It's gratis for open source projects, so it's free."
me: "That's isn't free."

:-)

> BTW, if we really want to mention licensing, we should mention GPLv3
> rather than just "free" I think. This way it would actually be a
> distinguishing point.
> 
> It is also known to be controversial -- no doubt it would attract
> certain kinds of people, and repell others... Do we want that?

I don't know if it would really attract enough people. 

Especially since the GPLv3 part is currently just a dream - though a nice one 
:-)

Best wishes, 
Arne

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