Don, el 10 de marzo a las 06:43 me escribiste:
> To quote Richard Stallman:
> ------
> However, the obvious meaning for the expression “open source software” is “You can look at the source code,” and most people seem to think that's what it means. That is a much weaker criterion than free software, and much weaker than the official definition of open source. It includes many programs that are neither free nor open source.
> 
> Since that obvious meaning for “open source” is not the meaning that its advocates intend, the result is that most people misunderstand the term.

Free Software is a very ambiguous term too (many people think of "free" as
in no charge).

Unfortunately English is a very crappy language ;)

> ------[etc]
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
> 
> I'll try to never use the term "open source" again. EVER.

I think FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) is the term to use to make
all the people happy =)

-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PENE MUTILADO POR PENETRAR UNA ASPIRADORA
	-- Crónica TV

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Leandro Lucarella <llucax@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Free Software is a very ambiguous term too (many people think of "free" as
> in no charge).
>
> Unfortunately English is a very crappy language ;)

I think with the absurd preponderance of FLOSS proponents saying "free as in freedom!" the term "free software" really cannot be interpreted as anything *but* FLOSS anymore.  Frankly I'm sick of hearing "free as in freedom!" and "libre!" all the goddamn time, I know what is meant :P

Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> Unfortunately English is a very crappy language ;)

I think it's a great language, it's just completely unsuitable for computers, which is why we invent computer languages!

"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:gpbmma$29lj$1@digitalmars.com...
> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>> Unfortunately English is a very crappy language ;)
>
> I think it's a great language, it's just...

I dunno, I'm convinced that if English weren't my native language I'd have never been able to learn it ;)  Pseudo-phonetic alphabet, more grammatical exceptions than rules, etc. When I was taking various foreign languages in school, I found Spanish and German to be far more difficult than Japanese largely *because* Japanese is so much more different from English than the others. But then again, I am known for being a bit weird :)

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:gpbmma$29lj$1@digitalmars.com...
>> Leandro Lucarella wrote:
>>> Unfortunately English is a very crappy language ;)
>> I think it's a great language, it's just...
> 
> I dunno, I'm convinced that if English weren't my native language I'd have never been able to learn it ;)  Pseudo-phonetic alphabet

What do you mean with pseudo-phonetic?

How do you pronounce the first letter of "I"? And the first letter of "Incredible"? That doesn't seem to have any logic! :-P

I always laugh when I see webpages that try to explain in English how to pronounce words in another language. For example:

Come ti chiami? --> KOH-meh tee kee-AH-mee?
Piacere di conoscerla --> pyah-CHEH-reh dee koh-noh-SHEHR-lah
Comment vous appellez-vous? --> kuh-MAHN vooz ah-puhll-ay VOO?

:)

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> How do you pronounce the first letter of "I"? And the first letter of "Incredible"? That doesn't seem to have any logic! :-P

If you work with kids teaching them to read phonetically (rather than look-say), you'll discover that by and large, the phonetic rules work very well. They'll pronounce about 80% of the unfamiliar words reasonably correctly.

The words that don't work so well phonetically are often borrow-words from foreign languages or words that have had their pronounciation shift over the years since their spelling was sed. For example, the silent 'e' at the end used to be pronounced.

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Leandro Lucarella <llucax@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Free Software is a very ambiguous term too (many people think of "free" as
>> in no charge).
>>
>> Unfortunately English is a very crappy language ;)

It's a great ball of mud. Fascinating and structureless.

> 
> I think with the absurd preponderance of FLOSS proponents saying "free
> as in freedom!" the term "free software" really cannot be interpreted
> as anything *but* FLOSS anymore.  Frankly I'm sick of hearing "free as
> in freedom!" and "libre!" all the goddamn time, I know what is meant
> :P
Yes. It's a lot more obvious in German. frei = liberty, kostenloss = no cost.
Maybe they need to change the name to: "Frei Software" <g>.

The upshot of all this, though, is it seems there's no term for "source is available" (without necessarily being able to be redistributed).

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:01:04 +0300, Don <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:

> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Leandro Lucarella <llucax@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Free Software is a very ambiguous term too (many people think of "free" as
>>> in no charge).
>>>
>>> Unfortunately English is a very crappy language ;)
>
> It's a great ball of mud. Fascinating and structureless.
>
>>  I think with the absurd preponderance of FLOSS proponents saying "free
>> as in freedom!" the term "free software" really cannot be interpreted
>> as anything *but* FLOSS anymore.  Frankly I'm sick of hearing "free as
>> in freedom!" and "libre!" all the goddamn time, I know what is meant
>> :P
> Yes. It's a lot more obvious in German. frei = liberty, kostenloss = no cost.
> Maybe they need to change the name to: "Frei Software" <g>.
>
> The upshot of all this, though, is it seems there's no term for "source is available" (without necessarily being able to be redistributed).

I always thought Open Source mean just that until I read this very thread.
Oh, well.. live and learn.

Perhaps, should've named it Free Source Software rather than Open Source.

"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:gpbpib$2eek$1@digitalmars.com...
> Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>>
>> What do you mean with pseudo-phonetic?
>>
>> How do you pronounce the first letter of "I"? And the first letter of "Incredible"? That doesn't seem to have any logic! :-P

Yea, that's exactly what I mean. English pretends to be phonetic but really isn't (at least not anymore). But I never truly saw just how non-phonetic it was until I learned the Japanese -kana alphabets. Those alphabets really make English's claim of being phonetic look ridiculous.

>
> If you work with kids teaching them to read phonetically (rather than look-say), you'll discover that by and large, the phonetic rules work very well. They'll pronounce about 80% of the unfamiliar words reasonably correctly.

It "works" because they hear the phonetic pronunciation that they come up with and realize that it sounds similar to (but not the same as!) some particular word that they know. That clues them in that the word it *sounds like* is probably the word that they're trying to read. You can even hear them going through the process of starting with a phonetic pronunciation and then morphing it into the real word. (Besides, that remaining 20% is still quite a lot.)

The same exact thing happens when English speakers learn to read Japanese Katakana and come across an English word written in Katakana (or a romanized version of the Katakana). Most of the time, the Japanese pronunciation is noticeably different from the actual English pronunciation, but when you "hear" the Japanese pronunciation it gives you a good idea of what English word it's trying to approximate. ("terebi", "bideo gaimu", "beisubaaru", etc. Note: I may have the exact spellings of these wrong because I'm unsure of the exact pronunciation. Maybe our resident Japanese-speakers can correct me?)

>
> The words that don't work so well phonetically are often borrow-words from foreign languages or words that have had their pronounciation shift over the years since their spelling was sed. For example, the silent 'e' at the end used to be pronounced.

That's one thing that's kind of nice about Japanese. Native words and loanwords are written in different alphabets (sort of like uppercase vs lowercase), so unlike English, you generally know if a word is a properly-pronounced native word or a potentially-differently-pronounced loanword. (Not that this is necessarily the original reason for the separate native/foreign alphabets, but it's at least a nice benefit.)

Reply to Nick,

>> If you work with kids teaching them to read phonetically (rather than
>> look-say), you'll discover that by and large, the phonetic rules work
>> very well. They'll pronounce about 80% of the unfamiliar words
>> reasonably correctly.
>> 
> It "works" because they hear the phonetic pronunciation that they come
> up with and realize that it sounds similar to (but not the same as!)
> some particular word that they know. That clues them in that the word
> it *sounds like* is probably the word that they're trying to read. You
> can even hear them going through the process of starting with a
> phonetic pronunciation and then morphing it into the real word.
> (Besides, that remaining 20% is still quite a lot.)
> 

I think that English can't be spelled phonetically because it isn't pronounced consistently enough. Even if you spelled it 100% correct in the midwest US, the south, southwest, northwest and east, not to mention the UK would still be wrong.