gnucash and "open source"

[Josh Sled]

karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) writes:
> Back in August 2006, there was a fairly long thread kicked off by rms
> requesting that "open source" be replaced with "free software" on the
> gnucash.org web page:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2006-August/018378.html
>
> It culminated in this message from Thomas:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2006-August/018411.html
> which, together with the following replies, seemed to imply that the
> changes would be made.  But, in fact, they never were -- the web page
> still says "open source".
>
> Someone else just reported this to rms and me, so we'd like to get it
> resolved this time, one way or another.  Help?

I've updated the following:

- images sources (/gnucash/trunk/art/{logo,splash,banner}.svg)
  - s/Open Source/Free/
  - s/Finance/Accounting/ (consistency)
  - s/Gnucash/GnuCash/ (consistency)

(This was a more involved than it initially appears, since – it's a bit hard
to see in most versions – but the blue card item actually has a feature (in
the lower right corner) that says "Open Source" ... well ... said, anyways.)

- the splash screen bitmap export
  (awaiting backport to the 2.2 branch)

- the website banner bitmap export

- the text of the website: page title and news items from 2.0.0 through 2.2.1.

The news items mostly said one of two things:

- "GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software"
- "[...] free, open source accounting program"

I changed the former but not the latter; the more recent release
announcements don't include it anyways.


> Although I agree that the double meaning of "free" is especially
> unfortunate for accounting software, there is no good alternative.
> (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html is rms'
> latest essay about this.  From the standpoint of GNU and the free
> software movement, it would be better to refrain from saying anything
> than to say "open source".)

"Open source" might not convey everything that "Free" (libre) does, but it's
hard to see how it would be better to not say anything.

-- 
...jsled
http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo ${a}@${b}
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 188 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/attachments/20071205/68cabeb5/attachment.bin