(Adapted from a comment to Mako's blog)
Bruce Byfield expressed some dismay, both here and on his own blog, with my having dredged up (perhaps "exhumed" is better) the "GNU/Linux" thing. As I've said to Bruce, if I do so, it's for two reasons: first, the FSF simply won't give in on it. It must have come up, in various forms, at least three separate times in Stallman's keynote at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit ("There is one GNU, and Linux is but one of its kernels". Right. It's the one that actually works and is used by people in numbers worth mentioning.)
While the one-sided "argument" over Linux versus GNU/Linux is a quibble, the discussion—such as it is, since the partisans of "free" pretty much refuse to discuss the matter—is somewhat more serious. In fact, Stallman himself feels it to be so serious that it's his number-one issue with the Codeplex Foundation.
The first thing we see is that the organization ducks the issue of users' freedom; it uses the term "open source" and does not speak of "free software".
We all love freedom. This whole site exists because I've come to dislike, more and more, being told exactly how I should be "free", in strident terms, by people who espouse positions with which I disagree and do things I find offensive.
While I understand and appreciate the reasoning of those who want to defend the continuing use of the word "free" (as in "software"), and sympathize, but I've been feeling more and more this year as though the "free software movement" is increasingly associated with positions which I can't support.
The strident, bitter and divisive "Microsoft hatred" is one thing. However, when we've gotten to the point where someone is denounced by the president of the Free Software Foundation as a "traitor to the free software community" for joining a foundation, one which seems to have an arguably worthy purpose, purely because Microsoft is a sponsor of said foundation, we're going into something like Stalinist Kool-Aid-Land, in my view. de Icaza was, as mentioned in the previous installment, removed from the FSF board by Stallman for refusing to support a campaign to persuade people to call "Linux" "GNU/Linux" instead.
Just as bad, at the same event, when the question of Mr. Stallman's "harmless little joke" at GCDS came up, he responded that "The person who brought that up"—i.e. me, apparently—"seems to be a troll-like enemy of the free software movement." I'm still waiting for word on whether these statements represent official positions of the FSF. Clearly, if the FSF ever gets its own gulag so as to better enforce its notions of "freedom", Miguel and I will be on the first train out there.
(As an aside, that's a pretty neat equation, especially while the FSF was concurrently sponsoring a "minisummit" on "women in free software": "bring up an issue regarding a clearly sexist joke in a keynote at a technical conference" == "troll-like enemy of the free software movement". I suppose that makes people like Celese Lyn Paul, Matt Zimmerman, Matthew Garrett, André Klapper, Sandy Armstrong, Chani Armitage and many others "enemies of the free software movement" as well. At least I'm in good company.)
The leading voice of the "free software community" neither accords simple respect to people who make decisions that the FSF doesn't agree with, preferring to go straight for character assassination, nor respects women in the community (and the order-of-magnitude lower level of participation by women in community development versus corporate development only underscores that).
So, what am I signing up for by using the word "free software" to describe what I do? Loyalty oaths, enemy lists and continuing denigration of women, it seems. That's not freedom; that's "freedom" to do and think what somebody else tells you.
For my part, like Linus, I'll call it "open source".
