It’s a way of explicitly remarking the free part. Before OSI’s definition Open Source referred to permissive licences. In most cases it still refers to permissive licences, thus the clear distinction is relevant.

Unless people starts to refer to BSD, Apache and similar as open source permissive in order to differenciate with open source copyleft (or similar).

Otherwise I feel is completely relevant to refer to copyleft software as Free Software. It helps both to show that there’s differences between both and also makes new people realize that there are different alternatives.

Putting GPL (copyleft) licences in the same bag as BSD-like (Open source and similar, permissive) licences is prejudicial for the FOSS environment.

While Open Source licencea are better than privative ones, they still do not defend the software freedom. Thus making them equivalent to GPL-like licences is misleading.

Users that do not have much knowledge about software freedom may think that Open Source projects are as free as GPL-like ones. This could mean that users end trusting this software as much as GPL-like one.

Open Source does not respect software freedom which in turn means that it also does not defend user freedom.

Putting Free software and Open Source as the same concept is dangerous. Companies prefer Open Source licences because they are able to not respect the software freedom.

If Free Software and Open Source is treated as equal, then those companies can disguise themselves as something they aren’t.

In internet different people reads what you post. Talking with property is important in order to not fool possible new users.

You could for example know the difference between both licences but someone reading you could not.

Swapping concepts of projects that explicitly are Free Software and advertising them as Open Source is a quite disrespectful statement against the creators of those projects.

It’s like confusing left from right. It completely negates the intentions they had when opting for a Free Software licence.

If you are not able to distinguish them at least refer them as FOSS as some kind of respectful attempt.

You realize that Linux is not Open Source. The open source parts of Android are mostly of the google ones (AOSP).

FreeBSD is an Open Source OS.

macOS uses the lack of defense that BSD provides (for Darwin). That’s what Open Source licences are.

There are more examples of Open Source project:

MINIX 3 -> Derives into one of the worst pieces of malware ever. The Intel Management Engine.

There is no such Open Source licence infringement. Open Source licences like BSD clause 3 are permissive in every aspect (well maybe not in TM part). They are so open that they allow restricting the freedom of the software.

Linus Torvalds already stated (LinuxCon 2016):

Over the years I’ve become convinced that the BSD license is great for code you don’t care about. I’ll use it myself. If there’s a library routine that I just want to say ‘hey, this is useful to anybody and I’m not going to maintain this,’ I’ll put it under the BSD license.

Referring to Free (libre) Software as Open Source is a disqualification of those projects and their philosophy.

Open source? Hmmm MacOs? Android?

I come from Debian stable so…

I’m currently ending the Guix manual. I want to add freetube and N64recompiled packages. Didn’t know it’s difficult to get patches or packages update to mainstream.

It’s a bit funny that the records that Guix uses are not the baseline records of the Guile api but modified ones. And the documentation in some low-level regards is scarce.

But using Guix opens up endless options and more importantly it helps you manage and learn how to setup operating systems.

Guix System. The way that this distro keeps track of changes of the distro itself. The concept of having a store where everything you build is stored there with write protection. The fact that you can configure not only the system but every home environment to every detail but without having to deal with various configuration files that you keep track of it.

The fact that all builds are bit by bit reproducible. The extensibility you have in your system.

It’s the first distro I feel that nothing in your own OS instance is tied to any distro decisions.

The fact that you can have multiple versions of the same library without breaking the system.

It has a lot of things that I never thought it could be possible with a distro without going crazy about creating a very messy configuration.

You could try Guix (either standalone or Guix system). You can have a immutable profile, an immutable home environment with centralized configuration and much more!

The ability of having immutable environment and dotfile configurations is amazing.

MrRobot plot IRL just droped!

reboot is linked (aliased) to your init program. In the case you are using systemd then it’s equivalent to systemctl reboot.

reboot is generic and calls whatever init program you use.

There are more than one init. Like for example GNU Shepherd.

Free Software*

Vscode is malware

Shepard? Do you mean Shepherd?

You should probably check out Guile.

Damn who imagined that gaming would be the topic that made the FOSS OSes relevant. I don’t agree on all that steam does but, they really nail it with the Steam deck and Steam Os.

A lot of people have steam deck and it helps realize that GNU/Linux is an amazing OS.

On the other hand Microsoft and Apple are doing their best to try to give more reasons to switch.

Lunix kernel? That’s new.

BSD licence allowed to work with the AT&T licence which at the end generated all the drama. Unix wars.

Again BSD is great if you don’t care about what will happen with your code.

Yeah the Android point doesn’t have any sense, that’s right.

Apple shares the code of the parts they want. Since it’s not a copyleft licence, then they can still ship you a version of Darwin + privative code as your macOs without sharing the entire code. So you end running kind of Frankenstein program with parts you don’t know what they do.

AOSP is not a great licence because it allows Google benefit from contributions, but then it has tons of privative software on top. So basically contributing to the AOSP means that you improve the code that later it’s used in combination with privative one.

My point is that libre source code should enforce that derivations of it stay libre. Otherwise you are working for free for companies that don’t care about the users.

Hey for companies is a good point. The best system for them is open source. It makes sense for them to use it. And open source is much better than just privative.

From the point of view of the individual user and developer is not that great. It kind of hooks you in because it has open source parts, but you are probably unaware of all the closed source stuff that runs in combination with it.

I get the open source point, but I don’t find it fair at the long term for the individual developer and user.

Over the years I’ve become convinced that the BSD license is great for code you don’t care about. I’ll use it myself. If there’s a library routine that I just want to say ‘hey, this is useful to anybody and I’m not going to maintain this,’ I’ll put it under the BSD license.

Linus Torvals at LinuxCon 2016

GNU Hurd didn’t take a good path of development following MACH design. But I still think GNU Hurd is the kernel of the future. Probably the Next generation Hurd. Just because GNU MACH and Hurd present very convoluted designs.

A kernel that performs most of their activities in user space and that it is truly modular looks very promising for the kind of systems we have nowadays and in the future.

Someone has to make the change, or we will stagnate in cumbersome and up featured systems.

Clang and the LLVM with BSD like licences so we can get the 80’s suing experience of UNIX yet again.

It’s impressive how many people in the FOSS community hate GNU. Even to the point of creating OSes without GNU in it. Working for free for companies just to get their contributions stolen or expunged.

Apple loves Open Source, they can stole it as they like, like they did with Darwin (a derivation of XNU). Everything is open until we no longer want to, and you don’t have any right to desist such actions. This sounds like a dream for them.

Google loves Open Source, they can build an spyware, ad vending machine, DRM platform that is hosted in almost any IOT machine. This is Android.

The community has to realize that if you care about your software you have to ENFORCE the freedom of it.

The are entire projects just to liberate android from google. That’s is all fault of the open source licence.

There are quite a lot of projects which exist to liberate software projects that have been taken hostage. This is no sense.

Most of the IOT devices are presenting paywall features thanks to Android: cars, fridges, TVs, etc. What is next?