To underscore the point here: the FSF

1) hasn't/doesn't publish a free software definition that describes copyleft as a precondition to free software

2) hasn't/doesn't claim in any of their non-normative commentary that the definition has that precondition

3) readily and regularly refers to projects published under permissive licenses like the BSD, MIT/X11, and Apache licenses as "free software", despite not being copyleft licenses

4) themselves publish/maintain/govern software projects that are licensed under permissive licenses like the aforementioned non-copyleft licenses

The claim that "'free software' means 'copyleft'" is a pernicious, bizarrely recurring but wildly misinformed claim that only shows up on message boards by people who can't ever have actually read primary sources that explain the positions of the organization they purport to describe, and have instead just, like, decided they understand the topic (through, I dunno, osmosis or something, I guess).

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adastra22 6 days ago | parent [-]

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Linked to from here:

https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software

Very explicit about open source being different from free software.

Also if what you say is true, there would be no reason for “open source” to exist. It was coined by Christine Peterson explicitly because the term free software conveyed a different ideal than the BSD/MIT license crowd was aiming for.

	▲	umanwizard 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> nearly all open source programs are in fact free. You are just wrong, and your first link proves it. The definitions are essentially identical. The philosophies behind them are different. It's like the "Gulf of America" vs. the "Gulf of Mexico". You are talking about the same territory in either case, just expressing a different viewpoint about it.
	▲	6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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