Hi All - good day to you in these difficult times
Many people are looking forward to the *FOSS4G 2022 *in Firenze, Italia.
This event is in the hearts and minds of many, with excellent tech and
networking. I am reading up on project status with an editor hat on my
head for the new 15th edition of *OSGeoLive* disk.
I see on the *GeoNode* web site this page, it says:
"/It is composed entirely of free software, allowing it to be freely
distributed, duplicated and passed around./"
https://docs.geonode.org/en/master/start/quick/index.html#osgeo-live-cd
In my opinion as a software developer and editor at OSGeoLive, I
think this way of describing OSGeoLive causes trouble.. "Free" in
English means two different things.. OSGeo dot org and others face a
long-term public relations challenge among many professional software
developers and their executive leadership.. these words are not helping
in my opinion.
I would encourage geonode and others to describe the Legal Freedom or
*Libre* side .. not "free" like a cheap pen with a logo available at
your hotel room. It is "free" like the promise of *Open Source
Software*, you can try software, examine the source code, make changes
to that source code to learn or extend it, and you can develop from the
base of the software as you choose, according to the license of the
software stack.
I ask that GeoNode and other projects please consider how you
describe OSGeoLive in public, and I encourage you to value and promote
software freedoms in your words. Specifically avoid the "free" like a
marketing throw-away item you get at a convention. The hours and years
of effort, the intelligence and the standards embodied in these software
stacks, deserve respect, not association with no-value cheap things.
thank you for your amazing and powerful efforts, and I look forward
to FOSS4G 2022 with others
best regards from Berkeley, California --Brian M Hamlin /
MAPLABS / OSGeoLive PSC
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