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Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing

56 pointsby falavaover 8 years ago

20 comments

legulereover 8 years ago
I think this is a bit extreme trying to change words to adhere to your own worldview and makes real discussions impossible. There&#x27;s nothing wrong e.g. with speaking about BSD-like licenses, if you don&#x27;t see a lack of copyleft as a flaw. This list even kind of reminds me even of Newspeak (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Newspeak" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Newspeak</a>).<p>So let me try to find something similar from a different perspective:<p>Copyleft Free Software: You may not be able to use copyleft licensed code together with code licensed under a different license. Better words are CDDL-proprietary or GPL-proprietary. An example in a sentence: ZFS can&#x27;t be integrated into Linux because Linux is GPL-proprietary.
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verandaguyover 8 years ago
These are honestly kind of ridiculous, and they come off as unbelievably pretentious. They also lack self-awareness, since they&#x27;re supposed to avoid being loaded.<p>- As mentioned, verbing &quot;GIMP&quot; can give it at least two loaded meanings which have _nothing_ to do with the image editor.<p>- &quot;Cracker&quot; also has a very, very different and loaded meaning outside of software.<p>And holy heck, the whole GNU slash Linux debate has gotten to the point of mass parody with the &quot;I&#x27;d like to interject for a moment&quot; meme. The worst part of it is that it&#x27;s easy to argue against this point because there are Linux systems out there which don&#x27;t necessarily use the GNU toolchain. The statement tries extremely hard to generalize the idea that Linux is irreparably crippled without the good graces of the GNU toolchain.<p>Ugh.<p>I want to push for the adoption of free and open source software and hardware, and I really do care about the ability to see the internals of, and tinker with, and break, and then fix the stuff I run in my day-to-day, but this kind of article makes the FOSS community (the free community especially; but the OSS community by extension) look bad by imposing this image of snobbishness and obsession over honestly minute details.<p>The movement to popularize free software and hardware won&#x27;t be won by making people stop calling digital audio players &quot;MP3 players,&quot; when it&#x27;s an accurate term for an overwhelmingly large part of the digital audio player market.
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sverigeover 8 years ago
The perpetual problem of this ideology is that so many people have &quot;wrong&quot; thoughts and speech. I&#x27;m surprised only that the list doesn&#x27;t include a narrower redefinition of &quot;freedom&quot; to mean &quot;free to agree with our definitions.&quot;
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ams6110over 8 years ago
&quot;When I use a word,&quot; Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, &quot;it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.&quot;
kefkaover 8 years ago
Nah. I&#x27;ll keep using Photoshopped, even if it&#x27;s a name of the ubiquitous image manipulation program.<p>What&#x27;s my comparison? Yeah, that&#x27;s been GIMPed. Gimp has meanings other than &quot;Gnu image manipulation program&quot;, like talking about handicapped peoples. In the wrong places, saying it&#x27;s GIMPed can get you in real trouble.
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Frondoover 8 years ago
I don&#x27;t imagine the FSF has really spent a lot of resources on this page, so it isn&#x27;t really troubling in the sense of &quot;so much effort, what a waste,&quot; so it&#x27;s more of an amusing, &quot;not much effort, but what a waste&quot;.<p>Those sorts of language changes happen, and it&#x27;s just never worth fighting for. Especially hacker vs cracker, that one was lost a long, long time ago.<p>Several of these fit into the same mental territory as genericized trademarks, i.e. digital audio player instead of mp3 player, or Kleenex-brand facial issues instead of Kleenex, again, not worth fighting for.<p>And several of these carry political loading of their own (e.g. don&#x27;t say &quot;theft&quot;), as well as that perpetual lost cause, GLAMP.<p>Oh well. Happily the FSF does a lot of other good work.
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kristiancover 8 years ago
Can&#x27;t help but feel that this would carry more weight if RMS did not do his thing or redefining perfectly good words to match his ideology - which I noticed is done here again with &#x27;Service as a Software Substitute&#x27;
lmkgover 8 years ago
Let me voice a dissenting opinion: I don&#x27;t mind this nearly as much as other people do.<p>Entities invested in intellectual property have tried, and largely succeeded, to influence what terms people use to describe intellectual property. They do this because it&#x27;s an effective way of affecting public opinion, by anchoring certain concepts against other concepts (it&#x27;s more effective on people who don&#x27;t have a strong opinion, which for copyright law is the majority of people). It&#x27;s a common and useful marketing tactic.<p>RMS is observant enough to see this happening, and recognize that it is one of the battlefields of public opinion. He is trying to counter it. And he is doing it in an open and transparent fashion, unlike his opposition, which unfairly opens him up to criticism.<p>The main problem I have is that terminology seems to be the main front where RMS focuses most of his efforts. He spends more time on pedantry and very fine, subtle arguments about distinctions between different types of abstract freedoms. So much that actual messaging becomes a secondary priority, to his detriment.
br_smartassover 8 years ago
I&#x27;d like to point one thing: ever since I started getting more interested into etymology, I&#x27;ve sort of fallen in love with words, and came to see them as much more alive and powerful than before, and I&#x27;ve started to care much more about their weight, their truthiness, their application, etc, so that I&#x27;m precise, and of course I also started getting more annoyed when I see them malapplied. I sometimes think that nothing made me feel smarter and sharper mentally than etymology(like the same effect history, logic, philosophy has, but maybe a little bit more fundamental), the <i>confusing</i> there is not just &quot;this is bad!&quot;, if you&#x27;re using confusing words your thinking gets less clear, lies pass through, making sense of things is harder, more error-prone, etc. When you start to notice things this way, a lot changes. And we sort of have to defend ourselves from the tonnes of bullshit we&#x27;re shot with everyday. So, yeah, I think this shit is real. Of course changing your vocabulary entirely can feel a bit extreme, but still, KNOWING words are loaded or confusing, or just marketing, or plain lie, plain propaganda, plain politics, is useful.<p>RMS of course cares much more about truthiness than he does what others think of him(and he was right before, remember it?). If one puts &#x27;self-awareness&#x27; above &#x27;truthiness&#x27; in their mind, it&#x27;s no wonder they&#x27;ll think this is weird, eccentric, etc. The cool thing about Truth, though, is that it&#x27;s way above vanity and opinion. The former scratches the later two, the opposite, not so much or not for very long.
cguessover 8 years ago
&quot;The term “creator” as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (“the creator”).&quot;<p>I... don&#x27;t... know... where... to... start....
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KittiHawkover 8 years ago
&quot;Please don&#x27;t spread this mistake. People who break security are “crackers.”&quot;<p>No, no, no. &quot;crackers&quot; has its own sordid baggage.
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droopyEyelidsover 8 years ago
This page is a succinct introduction to the important concepts of free-software thought and GNU ideology, regardless of what problems you might have with the actual definitions it supplies.<p>Try and understand the different culture before condemning it all!
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dijitover 8 years ago
Agree with the Cloud one completely, but then again my laptop is adorned with the &quot;There is no cloud; it&#x27;s just someone elses computer&quot; sticker so I&#x27;m very biased already.<p>When I saw the topic and the URL I was taken back to the coreboot fiasco, and I was sure this was related.. but no, it&#x27;s just a load of recommendations on changing language that nobody will follow. And mostly there is strong justification for not following, even if GNU&#x2F;FSF had a huge following.<p>Who on earth wants to replace &quot;Photoshopped&quot; with &quot;GIMPed&quot; or &quot;digitally manipulated&quot;, it&#x27;s not going to win friends with suggestions like this.. even if I see their point.
dolzenkoover 8 years ago
&gt; The term “WC” has been suggested for a computer running Windows. LOL
lovichover 8 years ago
A little offtopic, but could someone explain to me what the free software philosophy as espoused by Stallman&#x2F;GNU is doing that is both good AND separate from the open source movement? Everytime I have seen the differences highlighted, it&#x27;s been in some condescending article like this from GNU themselves where they are telling everyone how they are thinking wrong. I&#x27;d really like to know what the benefit of their philosophy is that isn&#x27;t shared by the OSS movement
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Flimmover 8 years ago
The very confusing term &quot;free software&quot; isn&#x27;t on this list, and that fact speaks volumes.
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BurningFrogover 8 years ago
Thinking about what words to use is worthwhile for any language user.<p>Obsessing about it at this level, and trying to cram so much meaning into them, is confusing surface with substance.<p>In the end, a word is just a few syllables some people use as shorthand for deeper concepts. It can never <i>be</i> the concept.
GFK_of_xmaspastover 8 years ago
Stallman wants &quot;GLAMP&quot; instead of &quot;LAMP&quot; for the stack, but if someone&#x27;s already talking about the LAMP stack, how much of the gnu userspace tools are they bringing in anyway.
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nougatineover 8 years ago
Larry Ellison is a software developer? That&#x27;s news to me. Last time I checked he was the CEO of Oracle.
CalChrisover 8 years ago
RMS
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