[Sugar-devel] [SLOBS] [IAEP] MOTION: French visa for Samson Goddy to attend 10-year Anniversary Scratch Conf / 50-year Anniversary of Logo

[Tony Anderson]

It must be a sign of a mature organization that it has so much time to 
devote to this. Keep in mind, Samson is going to a Scratch conference. 
As I understand it, Scratch is now based on Flash. The nature of Flash 
makes 'open source' and 'free software' a bit problematic.

Tony

On 06/13/2017 11:37 PM, D. Joe wrote:
> Open Source and Free Software are not mutually exclusive terms.
>
> Perhaps you are thinking of the distinctions between copyleft software
> versus permissively licensed software?
>
> For those to whom this is old news, please forgive this brief review, but it
> seems important at this point to get it out there to some who are unfamiliar
> with it:
>
> Historically speaking, the Debian Free Software Guidelines[1] (DFSG) are a
> bridge between the concept of free software as the Free Software Foundation
> casts it[2] and as the Open Source Initiative casts it[3], in that the FSF
> came first,[4] then the Linux kernel and distributions of it like Debian,
> then the OSI developed their definition from the DFSG.
>
> To take a more inductive approach, consider the broad overlap of software,
> including Apache, that are released under licenses that qualify both as Open
> Source by the OSD[5] and as free software[6].
>
> I'm afraid that anyone who has taken Sugar Labs use of the term "free" to
> mean only "availabe-at-no-charge" has been laboring under a
> misunderstanding.  This is, in essence, why I find the broader construction
> "free and open source software" to be not so problematic as other FSF
> members.
>
> Using "open source" provides at least some signal for disambiguation, for
> those who wish to understand better what we mean when we talk about
> developing, distributing, using, teaching, and learning with this kind of
> software.
>
> I think it's fair to ask, especially in an organization that has outreach so
> thoroughly baked into its work, how purist we should be. For my own part,
> I'm fine with going out to try to meet people where they're starting and
> where they live, just so long as we know, acknowledge, remember, and work
> towards bringing them back along with us to where we think everyone deserves
> to be, which is, in short, to be free.
>