Warp  wrote in message <487885c7@news.povray.org>:
>> but any plan to make POV-ray free software? What is the problem?
>   Will people PLEASE stop using the term "free software" to mean what
> the FSF has distorted it to mean? Pretty please?
> 
>   "Free", in common parlance, means "you don't have to pay anything to
> use it". Period. POV-Ray *is* free. You don't have to pay anything.

I agree with you to some extent, but not all the way. Consider the three
following sentences:

1. "Will POV-Ray become free?"
2. "Will POV-Ray become Free Software?"

The first means "free of charge", you are absolutely right.

The second, on the other hand, makes a reference to some specific and well
known notion "Free Software". A few people tried to define this notion; the
FSF was the first as far as I know, and all definitions say roughly the same
thing, including the right to commercially redistribute the software.

Everyone is entitled to take a word or several, flash it in front of its
product, and hope that people will accept it. If enough people take on this
word for long enough, its meaning becomes ipso facto the said product.

For example, if you read somewhere "I intend to vote democratic", you will
not answer "that is just silly, no candidate intend to abolish democracy, all
are democratic: you will immediately understand that means "I intend to vote
for the Democratic Party", and there is only one Democratic Party (in a
given political context).

When you encounter the words "democratic" and "republican" about USA
politics, it means the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, although
Democrats are republicans and Republicans are democrats.

Well, that is the same for "Free Software".

Two more sentences:

3. "Will POV-Ray become Free?"
4. "Will POV-Ray become free software?"

The sentence #3 is obviously a shorthand for "Free Software", the capital F
makes it absolutely clear.

The sentence #4 is just lazy spelling for "Free Software". If you have a
bucket of blue paint in hand, you say "this door will become blue", or
maybe "this door will become a blue door", but never "this door will become
blue door".

>   (The same could be said about "open source". "Open" in common parlance,
> in this context, means "you can look at it, you can access it, you can
> get it, you can modify it".

I find that one far fetched. In common parlance, "open" applies to a door or
a box, and that has nothing to do with software source code. The nearest I
can see is a book (if it is open, you can read it; but if it is not, you can
open it), but that does not get us much farther.

In this particular case, there is absolutely no doubt that "Open Source" is
a trademark.

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