Re: [Fsfe-uk] Fwd: Free Software as a brand

[Alex Hudson]

MJ Ray wrote:
> Is this idea a go-er?  Is the slashdot description misleading?
>   

To play Devil's advocate, I don't really get it.

A brand is a specific image and customer experience you want to create, 
and to do that requires a lot of control, which is basically the 
antithesis of developing stuff in the community where people can take 
things in different directions if they think it's a worthwhile pursuit.

Fundamentally, I think that's why "open source" didn't really succeed: 
it was terribly generic in order to create the broad church in which to 
include as many free software communities as possible, and ended up so 
broad that other people tried to shelter under it when they didn't 
really share many ideals. Hence the argument over whether or not "open 
source" and "free software" are even the same thing: for many people, 
they simply aren't, on both sides (e.g., I can think of plenty of GNU 
project members who refute that).

Cheers,

Alex.