[Video] For Software Freedom Avoid Free Bait
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Free and Freedom Not the Same
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THERE is this rather old deficiency, notorious ambiguity or syntactic issue with the English language and the way Western culture presents/perceives freedom, typically conflating the ability to buy or the ability to choose with "freedom" (even if all the available options take away the buyer's real freedom/s).
There's an increasingly good reason why many in the Free and Freedom Software community use words like "libre" (from Spanish), borrowing lexicons that are less confusing or less open to misleading interpretations. Similarly, due to openwashing, many nowadays avoid the term "Open Source" (and "open-source") altogether. Let's focus on the F word, Freedom. It's not a dirty word.
The Microsoft-friendly media is trying to portray Microsoft Office as something you can get for "free". That's not only misleading (or utterly false); it serves to distract from the real options that will be truly free, not just in terms of cost. Microsoft Office is neither. That article should be about how to download and install LibreOffice (from The Document Foundation) or Calligra (from the KDE community) for free, to paraphrase an associate.
Lately we've been very busy covering patent issues, so we didn't write much about Free (libre) software. That might change some time next month. Seeing that GNU/Linux grows worldwide (not just Chromebooks) it's very important the stress the differences between 'free to use' (temporarily) and freedom to operate, so to speak, as well as ability to exercise control over the computer program/s one uses. In recent decades an asymmetric relationship between computer users and computer programs was developing; companies sought to control users via programs, rendering these programs a tool of coercion if not oppression.
It's important to encourage people to think about these issues and openly debate these issues. Do not take anything at face value; do not take any of this for granted. â–ˆ