It's time to restore the meaning of free

Story: Tenable discusses the Nessus 3 releaseTotal Replies: 3
Author Content
r_a_trip

Nov 27, 2005
6:06 AM EDT
GPL open-source versus free

It's the degradation of the word free that has gotten Free Software in such a pickle. People associate the word free almost exclusively with no cost. Freedom doesn't seem to matter anymore.

When people hear Free Software, they think gratis software. We should get political like RMS and push to make free mean freedom again. If something is at no cost, then point that out when free is used inappropriately.

Who cares that Nessus is still gratis. How can you trust a closed source security program to do what it was designed to do, other then to trust Tennable. Well, the Nessus 2.2 codebase is still Free,maybe the derivatives can fill the void.
dinotrac

Nov 27, 2005
6:32 AM EDT
Ironic --

Open Source may come closer to the meaning of free software than free.

Linguistically, at least.

Slap me and call me Willy.
r_a_trip

Nov 27, 2005
6:57 AM EDT
No, no need to slap you, you're absolutely right. That's why free needs to mean freedom again and gratis must be restored to the full form free of charge.
tuxchick

Nov 27, 2005
11:25 AM EDT
Mr Gula's reasoning is, um, well, confused is the kindest word I can think of. It's his program and he can do what he wants. I just hope that the Nessus 2.0 fork succeeds.

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