I'm not sure how to interpret your reply in the context of what the parent is saying. Of course if it's not common to use the term then people will find it odd, out of place or maybe even pretentious. If some influential people manage to push it, eventually it'll be accepted.

If our industry as a whole managed to utter words like "cloud computing", "webscale" or "full stack" with a straight face I really think "libre software" shouldn't be that out of reach.

Sure, if a term becomes mainstream it's use is obvious. If you need to explain the connotations of a word in a lengthy forum post it's a pretty good indicator the use of the word is not adviced unless you are a tredn setter. If Elon Musk started to use the word libre software it might become a common enough term. If I use the word libre software I would have to first explain the word 90% of the time and become embarrased for an awkward and pointless use of an obscure term 85% of the time.

>If you need to explain the connotations of a word in a lengthy forum post it's a pretty good indicator the use of the word is not adviced

That is the current reality with the word "free". Pretty much every HN/Reddit submission on free software will have this discussion, with plenty of people disagreeing with the use of the word "free". Unfortunately, the usual response is simply a denial of reality: "Those who don't oppose the word 'free' have an ulterior anti-free agenda" or some similar sentiment.

I think the following analogue is apt: lots of people drink coffee in the post-Columbian world. When you order coffee and sugar most of the 8 billion people on the planet understand what you are talking about. However, if starbucks does not exist nobody understand what frappucino is. You can have the drink and have a very active internet group of frappucino afficionados, but despite the fact you know thousands of frappucinistas, still somehow the concept does not escape your internet sorority to a popular fame.

You've tried ordering the frappucino at the local diner, patiently explaining the merits of this fantastic bewerage, convinced by the zeal of your fellows that this thing is the best thing to happen to coffee bean ever. To no avail.

Or let's make this even more concrete. You are an english nobleman trying to order coffee in venice in 1614. No can do, coffee arrived in venice in 1615. Unless you know someone specific you cannot explain coffee to most people in venice 1614. In 1615 everyone knows, or think they know what it is, as clergymen banned coffee only little bit after it arrived...

My point is, you can have a very good idea but ideas don't spread by the merit of their goodness. I mean, we've know decades what we are doing to the biosphere but only now the large population is taking notice as shit starts to actually it the fan.

So people who discuss libre software fervently might be right, but that still does not mean you achieve anything by prosetylizing the concept to your employer.

Last analogue: You were stolen from Senegal and now are planting cotton in Georgia. A guy called Sam claims he owns you and will beat you if you try to leave. You are convinced slavery is wrong and that no one should be able to own another human being. Most of you fellow slaves agree but somehow you've failed to convince Sam and the rest of his farmer friends.

You've written a lengthy comment explaining the problem with using the word libre, while completely neglecting the problem with the word "free", which is what my comment is about. Attacking a position I'm not advocating is not fruitful.

We have a long history of using the word "free". The problems with the word are not hypothetical - it's there in the history - to the point that it divides the free software community.

Don't forget "serverless"

I personally will start using "libre" instead of "free" in relation to "free as in freedom" software. However, my comment was meant to exemplify the mentality I see at my university.

It's a mentality of "eh, it works". Of the, at this point, 50+ people I've talked to about software licensing about 3 put any merit in the libre approach. That's not scientific nor representative, but to me it's highly discouraging. Whenever my friend, who recently saw RMS talk live, talks about libre software I notice other students roll their eyes.

To be honest, I don't think most people, students or otherwise, are really even aware of what libre software and the GPL is - let alone think it's something worth investing time and energy into.

That's not what I was saying, I was pointing out weird or bombastic expressions that entered our collective technical/marketing lingo. Whether they are still relevant or not is not the point. "Cloud computing" is almost comical in its childishness when you think about it for a minute.

"Full stack" is a bit of a pretentious nitpick on my part, I actually hesitated putting it in there but couldn't resist. I'm an embedded developer who does a good amount of low level/bare metal work, so when I hear about engineering positions requiring being able to do basic Linux sysadmin + write some Python/PHP/JS/HTML/CSS/... referred to as "full stack" I always want to arrogantly point out that this is actually quite a long way away from the "full" stack. I guess it's just an other symptom of web technologies at large eating a huge portion of software development.

I always understood the term "full stack" to refer to a developer who has tried (and mastered some of) many different technologies and roles, including embedded, system, sysadmin, backend, desktop frontend, web frontend, DB stored procedures... It doesn't necessarily mean that such a person would be immediately proficient in a given technology (that depends on their recent experience), but given a few months' time they would produce solid code in any of these areas, and within a year they would be proficient in it.

In my understanding it has more to do with a person's ability to learn, or lack of fear from learning, if you wish.

Of course I have met my share of "full stack" devs (PHP + JS), but that's the same as with "senior" devs... Having a job title and being one is not the same thing.

Yeah, I consider myself "full stack" because I actively learn different types of software development that are outside of my current role, which is web front-end and backend (mostly Go and Postgres). I am proficient in s variety of languages, platforms, etc (e.g I love messing with embedded devices), and prefer to advertise my flexibility over whatever area I feel I am best at.

I've met quite a few who are happy specializing and essentially restricting themselves to a couple of technologies. When they call themselves "full stack", I get a bit annoyed, since I feel it should mean more than that.

So yeah, if you give me a month, I'm sure I can become productive in any given stack, and given a year, I'll be mostly indistinguishable from a specialist.

I had assumed “the cloud” comes from the visual shorthand of representing “arbitrary network resources somewhere” as an actual cloud in diagrams of networking systems. I recall this from early 2000s CS curriculum, predating it’s prevalence in industry marketing, though I’m sure it had been common well before then.

Most CS students aren't developers and haven't yet been bitten hard enough by bad licensing, in fact, they likely hope to profit greatly creating proprietary software. If you believe in something, embrace it, if you're right, time will bring people around. When it comes to "libre", the need for such a distinction is supported by thousands of real life examples, over decades, of users getting burned hard by bad licensing, even "open source" ones.

This is odd considering how relatively rare pre-packaged, proprietary software that makes boat loads of money actually is. CS students today are exposed to a lot more open source (look at what comes with a $5 hosting account) and SaaS, where the money is, today than 20, or even 10, years ago. Unless you're referring to games, but even the the big money making games make money on in-app purchases than with the sale of the software itself.

I disagree. It’s likely they go about almost all their day-to-day activities using proprietary (or at least not libre) software. Their primary OS (likely Windows or Mac), word processor, spreadsheets, presentations (Office or Google), email client, virtually every app on their phone (either platform). If they are in any non-CS, technical field, it is for sure using proprietary software (MATLAB, Autodesk, Adobe, ...). If they are in CS or a dev, they are probably using cloud platforms, GitHub, CI, an IDE, ...

Programming languages and code are so unique in being freely available, even the infrastructure around the them is proprietary.

Same here. I use libre software (perhaps with a tinge of irony). I don’t mind having a laugh about it every now and again. RMS himself is a pretty ridiculous figure.

And yet functionality, performant, et al.

How often do you use the term "free software" in the FSF sense?

How often does anyone care in the first place?