On 2/11/15, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:
Greetings from Singapore.
Sheesh.
You'd think that of all places, a Linux user group forum would be the *last* place where people would stare at a FOSS software distribution and not know what it was.
As a language pedant or peasant, (I never know how to truly label myself so I usually leave that to others) I wonder what free really means. Free Open Source Software, looks easy enough to understand, but in truth what is free. Free stuff, Free radicals, Free willy; the list of usage and mis-usage of free is endless. TANSTAAFL we all pay the piper in one way or another. When word magic is so prevalent in marketing, how do you shake out the spin and find the stable core of logic. IBM's VLIW Architecture exploits Instruction Level Parallelism and has been touted as the natural successor to RISC. However it is the manner in which you bundle primitive words together in ordinary day to day language which affects the experiential outcome of the listener. What happens when you buy the words but they fail you. If you got them free, there is no liability. The minute you pay for the words, you are thrust into the deep and murky world of administrative law. So isn't FOSS, as an administrative acronym, a bit of an oxymoron? In marketing you are free to buy other words, but who or what insures the damages caused by word mis-use? <SNIP VERY INTERESTING ANALYSIS>
It can't do any sustained damage to the ecosystem, and might even result in some healthy competition.
Any thoughts on project Ara? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara
Grab your popcorn.
- Evan