Talk:Free software community

FS and OSS
The free software community is not the same as the open software community and this probably should be changed the reflect this! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.58.253.131 (talk • contribs) 09:13, 2006-11-13


 * The free software philosophy and the open source philosophy are very different. Free software and open source software (the software, not the philosophies) are the same thing.  The community of people who use free software is the same as the community of people who use open source software.  The free software community contains people who disagree with the free software movement. Gronky 16:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This should clarify the difference. I suggest someone updates the article accordingly and insert this reference. Kctucker 18:03, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Possible reference
I found this interview with RMS:


 * http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39209580,00.htm

About how to judge companies that interact with the free software community. I can't see where to add it now, but maybe it has a place. --Gronky 09:11, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Apart from being considerably out of date and (putting my not-an-official-work-position hat on) issuing the standard, Slashdork-level "Sun is always partly evil" line that ignores all the GNOME a11y work, it's an opinion piece only tangentially related to the subject. I'm not sure that the community as a whole has a single voice, though insofar as it does I don't think it's much keener on being told what it thinks by RMS than it is by ESR. Chris Cunningham 09:36, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

this is micheal —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.154.166.83 (talk) 17:23, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Merge to free software
The article free software is missing discussion of the community, and the referenced content in this article is little more than a dictionary definition. Most of the inbound links appear to come from navigation templates rather than in-text links. I propose merging this content to free software and/or free software movement and redirecting it to free software. – Pnm (talk) 17:35, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The Free software movement and Free software articles are both too long to be merged into one large article. A summary of Free software movement should be added to the Free software article with a See main article link. Belorn (talk) 16:38, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Changed my mind. The article only has a single decent source about the subject as a whole, and should be relative easy to be merged into both the Free software and Free software movement. Belorn (talk) 11:31, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If anything, merging the free software article into free software community seems much more appropriate. There is a bigger problem though. The whole set of articles using the Free Software Foundation's "definition" of the word free need to be associated somehow, and more importantly, disambiguated from what someone uninitiated with the free software movement's agendas would ascertain the content of the articles were about by just reading the title.TechTony (talk) 13:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The lead at free software does exactly this. If it need to be expanded, and then in what way, and could you please then have that discussion at Talk:Free software? Belorn (talk) 09:55, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Does exactly what? Did you pick one little phrase from what I wrote to "respond" to? Having articles with the word 'free' in the title, but not meaning the dictionary meaning of 'free', but rather meaning the free software movement's commandiering of the word for their own purposes, is all of the following: incorrect, misleading, non-encyclopedic. I changed a title just as a short-term solution and to note the glaring flaw in the presentation of the material, because every minute the incorrect, misleading, non-encyclopedic articles are on Wikipedia, the lower the quality of Wikipedia. Something needs to be done pronto, and any kind of renaming will work: free(tm), "free", free [1], GNUFree, etc. If there is a better long-term solution, that is fine, but that should not preclude "stopping the hemmoraging of blood from the patient until he gets into the operating room". Merging the free software article into the free software community article works toward stopping the hemmoraging also, while merging the free software community article into the free software is like opening up another artery.TechTony (talk) 10:59, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry to stop you right here, but what you are engaging in are advocacy. This is not the forum for this, as Wikipedia explicit forbids it (see WP:advocacy and WP:FORUM for more details). Individual Word in a term can not be separated. for example, the term "software community" for example is not a community made of software (a robot community might however change this), through that would be a exact dictionary meaning of the word software and the word community taken separately. See the Terminology, but to sum it up: Terms are words and compound words that in specific contexts are given specific meanings, meanings that may deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. Free software is a term, that in specific contexts of software has a meaning that deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. Sorry to say, but languages has terminologies, and will always have them, and if you want to advocate for the abolishment of terminology or change the meaning of Free software in the context of software, then this is not the place to do so. Belorn (talk) 12:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * "Nice try", but even to the casual observer, what you accuse me of is false, and I resent your accusation. The articles "in question", though, (I think are) that of what you accuse me of. Those articles need to be framed in a context and not stand-alone articles that one could happen upon without seeing the context first. Without that, what value does "information" have, if it must "be taken with a grain of salt"? The "grain of salt", must be explicit, so I hold. That is one solution (implementation TBD). You may pick and choose from my dialog whatever you wish to serve your purposes, but that doesn't help your cause, now does it? I know encyclopedic information when I see it (well, I am not immune from the clever). I also know non-encyclopedic material when I see it. You, are engaging in what you accuse me of, yes? 'Free software' has meaning in the English language in common context. Being devoid of the context it is associated with in the Free software article, it is not encyclopedic material, because it does not mean what it says: free software. When there is a departure from common usage of language, in special context, it is misleading to present it without the context a priori. So I hold.


 * Context does always matter. You are "arguing my point"? You, to me, seem to be "arguing", with me, yes? You suggest that the free software article is "OK because within the context of software, it is appropriate", yes? The context of the free software article, is not software. Is 'this'' my "boldness:(?): The context of the Free software articles, is the free software movement or some associated thing. Yes?


 * You say "deviation". Yes, that is why the articles do not belong on Wikipedia as they are: they deviate from the reason for existence of Wikipedia: encyclopedic information. "Whatever that is"? Would you like to "go back to square one" and do Wikipedia all over again? ("Question to self"). On my "homepage" here, I think you will find something like "Wikipedia is my favorite website". Was I just lured-in to "the promise" of encyclopedic information, and upon actual experience find that ... that it is bait-n-switch/false-advertising? In newspaper (remember those?!) ads, isn't there "the curtesy" of an asterisk on the "free" items that lure? Maybe there is a law that requires retailers to do that, I don't know, but if the asterisk wasn't there, ... well here is the current issue with the "free " articles on Wikipedia, yes?


 * Your attempt to malign my intentions (isn't that what you were/are doing?) is without merit. That said, I have yet another solution to the problem: make the non-encyclopedic articles on Wikipedia (yes, all of them) unavailable for access until they achieve encyclopedic quality. Misleading information is worse than no information, I hold. I'm getting that icky, it-is-not-ironic-feeling (rhetorical). — Preceding unsigned comment added by TechTony (talk • contribs) 06:06, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Your logic does not make sense, but Im not going to continue arguing with you. You are holding a personal beliefs in what you think is encyclopedic information and what is not, and apparently also how terminology works and common sense. That's all good for you, but that's not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia are an encyclopedia based on information found in WP:reliable sources. If you are going to try to "change" Wikipedia, provide reliable sources to what you are trying to change and feel free to argue that. If you really feel like all the "free" articles are original research and does not match the reality in the real world, feel free to make a post at No original research/Noticeboard- though I doubt that you will get much support for your cause. Belorn (talk) 08:05, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * "Nice try, but no cigar". I know propaganda when I read it and most others can also. Those trying to exploit the Wikipedia for their own agendas aren't fooling anyone. All they are doing is keeping away a more general audience. In that sense, it makes Wikipedia much more like a wall of grafitti than encyclopedic. "Wikifitti" may indeed be a more fitting name fo this site than "Wikipedia". You can argue until you are blue in the face that propaganda is encyclopedic (as you seem to be doing exactly that). Think about how easy it would be to "one up" Wikipedia (i.e., actually provide encyclopedic content): reject propaganda in articles and refuse to display them when propaganda is discovered. I wonder how pervasive such exploitation is. I wonder if the GFDL basis of this site prevents the possibility of objectivity on the issue from the get go. Yes, I ask "the hard questions". It's not an accusation of course, but if the shoe fits...TechTony (talk) 14:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)