Ultimately software freedom is a matter of personal liberty, however it is framed. Whether you describe it as “open source” or “free software”, the goal is for each individual user of software to be self-sovereign in their software and data. Where the privilege of choice is available, this is a matter of consciously choosing liberty, and it is strictly a matter for each individual to make a set of choices — which will necessarily be inter-related.

Update: This post has graduated to the OSI blog and is also available en Français.

While the Free Software/Open Source movement is based on an essential and timeless concept — that users of software should be self-sovereign in that software — the linguistic frame in which it was positioned long ago continues to have some unfortunate consequences that ironically distract from the very goals the frame sought to achieve.

I often hear about how open source is not sustainable because it is “made by volunteers”. But that's misunderstanding the nature of volunteering in open source projects. Volunteering is relative, not absolute and it is not a useful indicator of the sustainability of a project because in independent open source projects all contributors are volunteers.

The shadow may seem more real than the thing itself