Privacy, Open Source, Free Software

That’s why Free-Software-Activists often tend to call it “Software Libre” as it indicates more clearly, what it’s meant to be.
In german the word “frei” has more than one meaning: “kostenlos” (“at no cost”) and “Frei” (“free as in freedom”).
The same is with the english term, standing for no cost and free(dom).
Therefor the try of claryfying this by comparing “freedom” with a beer at no cost in your pub…

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unfortunately the tech giants have forced this association upon the world in general. google openly admits they read gmail and collected (if they have actually stopped) unsecured wifi traffic while roaming the streets to provide google maps. just last month facebook got caught installing root-level access apps on the phones of teenagers.

i agree that open and free is an expansive topic, but do not see how it can be excluded from any question about software choice. especially in a FOSS community :slight_smile:

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Top Man Fast.Edi, you’re getting in a round, mine’s a Löwenbräu, danke. :smiley:

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You’re welcome to have a “Tannenzäpfle” here n the nice Schwarzwald…

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It wasn’t about anything other than Browsers - not about what source they came from just about them and why people chose them.

by my reading, that only serves to further my confusion. so many different ways of saying essentially the same thing. adding to the complexity, the fact that the same word (free/open/libre) can mean multiple things. round and round the semantic train we go :smiley:

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Sounds good, did like that neck of the woods, when I lived in Rheindahlen, many moons ago.

Was partial to Dortmunder Alt…hic… :sunglasses:

Yep, when you install Manjaro, you are asked your poison, free, non-free and sommat else. To get the necessary software to drive modern computers i go for the non-free. Nvidia, springs to mind.

:sunglasses:

i understand that you are saying that wasn’t your original intent, but discussions (especially ones that span months of time and are on open forums) can wander about a bit and some of us do make our choice based on source.

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some days i wish i had the fortitude to go full free-only. most days i just want something that works fairly hassle-free so i can watch netflix :slight_smile:

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You’re confirming my experience over the last 15 years when we have our meetings or information booths…
It’s not too easy to explain this to people, as they mostly are indoctrinated by the hard- and software industry that software has to be bought… and there’s no other way to deal with computers as with their ways…

It usually takes some time and patience to explain this properly.
Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but that’s how it goes as an activist…

But we never give up, never surrender… :wink:
I find it very important to show people that there are other ways to get around with computers. And that you can indeed help your neighbour by giving him a free operating system (or any other Free Software).
That’s how community works.
And as activists say: “Knowledge is free…”

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That’s why the open source fundamentalists have a field day, trying to be PURITANS, and every one else is the unclean.

If you don’t watch videos, play music or need a photographic utility. Bob yours uncle, lol

even when it came to regular philosophy, i was never the kind to believe any one school or train of thought could have all of the answers. what was the movie (book maybe?) quote? something like “even Jung would have a hard time being a Jungian”. or the proposed paper title from the young Marx movie “critique of critical critique”.

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Never the Twain.

:sunglasses:

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in spite of (or perhaps because of) the following discussion, i do appreciate you mentioning the difference and being willing to share your take on it. a couple relatively quick searches yield views of mozilla (my first introduction to privacy discussions back in my windows days) using the word open. ubuntu uses free as well as open. debian is all about the free.

all in all an interesting discussion and learning adventure.

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Which is why I said what I did. I had no problem with people saying they made their choice because of it be open source software, but then the conversation got dragged into that as being the topic not browsers.