(sorry if this is the wrong list for this kind of discussion, but Larry Augustin made me do it ;-) As a company enjoying considerable success selling free software, I've been approached by several readers of this list to adopt the phrase "Open Source" in our marketing descriptions of our Red Hat Linux Operating System. After discussing this widely within and outside Red Hat we can't say we much care for Open Source. We are sympathetic to the rationale behind trying to find a better term than "Free Software" because of the confusion that that term causes in the corporate and traditional software marketplace. But for all the failings of the term Free Software, it is less confusing and more accurate than Open Source. For more on our thinking on this subject, here's an internal guideline that we are using within Red Hat. Cheers, Bob. Bob Young, Red Hat Software, Inc. The Importance of Free Software to our customers ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The principal and common benefit of the Red Hat Linux operating system to our most loyal customers is the control that using freely distributable software gives them over their computer systems. While we may be (and probably are) winning customers simply because Linux works better than other OSes for many applications due to better reliability, or the inclusion of some driver or other, these are temporary advantages. The benefit that our truly loyal users cannot get elsewhere is that they can add features that they need when they need them. They do not have to go through the bureaucracy of signing NDA's and paying thousands for source code licenses just for the priveledge of improving some binary-only OS vendor's product for them. This benefit comes from the "features" in Linux of: 1. source code being available, and 2. a freely distributable license. The only accurate term we've seen for these features is "Free Software". The problem with the alternatives is, as rms points out, that they mean something other than the benefit we are trying to describe. There is nothing stopping Microsoft from publishing their source code, while maintaining their current restrictive licensing model. If they did this they would then get to call their software "Open Source". Companies like Troll Tech, with their Qt libraries, are already following this model. The importance of Free Software to the development of our Products. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The other side of the Free Software benefit to our customers is that it is in fact the Free Software model that makes our products as good as they are. Not only is Free Software important as a benefit to our customers is is also critically important to the successful development of our technology. Without the Free Software model Microsoft, with their army of developers, would produce better products than Red Hat does. Under the Free Software development model our "army" of developers includes (at least potentially) our whole user base. Our current development team is in fact bigger than even Microsoft's, or any other binary-only OS vendor, and is getting bigger. Some notes on Terminology. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ While we prefer the term Free Software as the name for this development model of software technology, it is not by itself the full description of that model. Red Hat has not yet defined what we mean as "Free Software", so the Free Software Foundation's definition is a good place to start: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html or Debian's "Social Contract" (although we -really- dislike that term) http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html For our professional and corporate users we want to define Free Software in terms that conveys the benefits they need from our technologies. We do -not- want to refer to our competition as selling "commercial software". The obvious problem being that this implies our software is "not for commercial use"! We should use terms like "binary-only software" or "published under a restrictive license" to describe Microsoft OSes which conveys the limitations of these products. We should describe our Linux products as being "cooperatively developed" which, assuming we mention NASA, MIT, and CERN Labs in the same breath, conveys the size and caliber of the large development teams working on Linux related technologies. Red Hat Software, Inc.----------------------------------------- Phone 919-547-0012 x227 Fax 919-547-0024 P.O. Box 13588 email: bob@redhat.com Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 http://www.redhat.com