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Going back and reading the initial comment, I think I see where you are coming from. The poster says "FOSS projects like GNU..." and that is off base if he was implying that GNU has anything to do with OSS. You are right, no one should be talking about a GNU as a FOSS project due to their outright rejection of the OSS ideology.

But just so we're clear, it is possible to talk about FOSS itself (the software) in a meaningful way. It's not like the term is oxymoronic or something, in fact, the two descriptions are nearly redundant when it comes to describing the rights you get as a user, which is what you should be concerned with as a user of the software.

Why shouldn't we apply this to projects as well? I guess the questions I would ask to clarify the point are: 1) What do you call a project that would like to empower users with software freedom but would also like to embrace the development style of Open Source? 2) Given that there are so many projects out there that embrace exactly that combination, shouldn't we have a name for that?



As I said before, different names results in different ideas. I haven't seen any software stating it's a FOSS software, I've only seen people who don't know the difference between Free Software and Open Software use the term. I don't think you are one of those but many are and that's why I hate the term "FOSS".




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