Richard Stallman is on /. today regarding his upcoming speech in Sydney. This is brief interview, with some silly questions thrown in, but it does a good job of breaking down Stallman's views.
I wasn't really aware of the ethical difference between FREE software and open source. Stallman explains:
The Free Software Movement holds that software users morally deserve the freedom to run, study, change, and redistribute the software they use. The term "open source" was coined, in 1998, to encourage free and not-quite-free software while leading attention away from the ethical foundations of free software. The rhetoric of "open source" presents the issue solely as a matter of practical convenience, not as a matter of freedom and cooperation. It does not say software *should* be open source, it just recommends a certain "development model" saying it usually leads to "better" software.
It seems here that Stallman is saying that Free Software is more of a philosophy than a "development model," which is exactly how most people seem to view open source and even shareware.
BTW, I recently bought a GNU t-shirt that I plan to wear at C's during my wiki panel.
Adding to the taxonomy
I'm thinking we might want to add "Free Software" to our taxonomy. What do you think?
Re: Taxonomy
I think it's fine, so long as we're aware that there's a particularly vehement debate in the software dev commumity about what qualifies as free vs. open, and that the distinction is lost on most. I don't know that engaging in what can be rightly seen in other contexts as constructive hairsplitting is ultimately all that constructive.
FOSS
on the one hand, i can see adding another taxonomy. on the other hand, while free software is different in ideological principle, i think if you reviewed most of the posts here categorized as open source, you would find that most of them would end up being posted under both categories.
FOSS would be a better term to use, in absence of using the two terms, but then i suspect that it might not be clear to many people, especially given how often i see academics conceptually misuse open source (much less, free software).