www/philosophy open-source-misses-the-point.html

[Richard M. Stallman]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Richard M. Stallman <rms>       14/09/21 17:19:54

Modified files:
        philosophy     : open-source-misses-the-point.html 

Log message:
        New section, "Rivals for Mindshare".

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.69&r2=1.70

Patches:
Index: open-source-misses-the-point.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html,v
retrieving revision 1.69
retrieving revision 1.70
diff -u -b -r1.69 -r1.70
--- open-source-misses-the-point.html   12 Apr 2014 12:40:32 -0000      1.69
+++ open-source-misses-the-point.html   21 Sep 2014 17:19:53 -0000      1.70
@@ -347,6 +347,30 @@
 term isn't the way.  Standing up for freedom entails showing people
 your support for freedom.</p>
 
+<h3>Rivals for Mindshare</h3>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Free&rdquo; and &ldquo;open&rdquo; are rivals for mindshare.
+&ldquo;Free software&rdquo; and &ldquo;open source&rdquo; are
+different ideas but, in most people's way of looking at software, they
+compete for the same conceptual slot.  When people become habituated
+to saying and thinking &ldquo;open source,&rdquo; that is an obstacle
+to their grasping the free software movement's philosophy and thinking
+about it.  If they have already come to associate us and our software
+with the word &ldquo;open,&rdquo; we may need to shock them intellectually
+before they recognize that we stand for something <em>else</em>.
+Any activity that promotes the word &ldquo;open&rdquo; tends to
+extend the curtain that hides the ideas of the free software
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, free software activists are well advised to decline to work
+on an activity that calls itself &ldquo;open.&rdquo;  Even if the
+activity is good in and of itself, each contribution you make does a
+little harm on the side.  There are plenty of other good activities
+which call themselves &ldquo;free&rdquo; or &ldquo;libre.&rdquo; Each
+contribution to those projects does a little extra good on the side.
+With so many useful projects to choose from, why not choose one
+which does extra good?</p>
+
 <h3>Conclusion</h3>
 
 <p>As the advocates of open source draw new users into our community,
@@ -416,7 +440,7 @@
 
 <p class="unprintable">Updated:
 <!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2014/04/12 12:40:32 $
+$Date: 2014/09/21 17:19:53 $
 <!-- timestamp end -->
 </p>
 </div>