I love Free Software. Unlocked Software is not meant to replace that term, but only be a less misleading term for introducing people to the idea of Free Software. When normal people hear the words “free software,” they think of software without a price for them to pay (instead of the correct meaning of software with freedom). Unlocked Software does not mislead them in that way. Of course, when a person becomes more knowledgeable, they will learn about the four freedoms, the history of Free Software, and the Free Software Foundation.
I am just looking for better language for introducing new people to Unlocked Software without misleading them.
How that could apply in this particular situation … the people who are really invested in the whole thing (us) have been using the existing terms for a very long time and will take some convincing to change … while most other people are in complete ignorance anyway and don’t care.
Change is difficult.
On the specific question of “lock” … from a technical perspective, the term is heavily overused. Think about all the ways in which “lock” is already used in the context of computers.
A particularly confusing situation (let’s say in Windows World) could be where I initially download the free version of some commercial software. Later on I pay for a “licence key” of some sort that I can then download and that will “unlock” the free version and turn it into the paid version. So some functionality gets unlocked, but my rights to the software haven’t improved.
Related to this topic, I’ve been thinking that the term FOSS directly encourages misunderstanding “Free Software” as software with a price of zero, versus software with freedom.
Here’s how: when “free software” is interpreted as software with freedom, such software always qualifies as “open-source,” because the source code is available to everyone who uses it. So, saying “software with freedom that is open-source” is completely redundant.
When people hear “free and open-source software (FOSS),” they could interpret that phrase to mean either (1) “software with freedom that is also open-source,” or (2) “software with a price of zero that is also open-source.”
Because the first meaning is redundant, people could reasonably conclude that the second meaning is correct, which lands them squarely in the trap of misinterpreting “Free” in “Free Software.”
Language is chock full of redundancy. People are used to it.
It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone would conclude FOSS to mean gratis software just because of the redundancy that freedom implies open-source.
locked and unlocked is even more confusing (for me and even more for newbies). If I speak about games (like you did inside the quote) and the “enthusiast” said “creating unlocked software” I would ask if he’s speaking about cracking games and as normal person I would loose interest after that longer explanation (in fact, people loose interest a way too fast on such topics - you can’t do a lot to improve it).
Ultimately, I am not taking issue with the meaning people give to the term FOSS, but instead that FOSS causes people to misinterpret the word “Free” in “Free Software.”
Also, I do not think that criticism of using the term Unlocked Software makes sense. I think the word “creating” in “creating Unlocked Software” tends to imply away from a meaning of cracking anything. People don’t talk that way. One would probably say “cracking software,” or at most “unlocking software” instead. Sorry, but that argument is not strong.
The term “unlocked software” doesn’t include the word “creating,” so I’m not sure if I understand your point here.
The term “unlocked software” also implies that it somehow used to be locked, or is supposed to be locked, or exists in a different configuration where it’s actually locked. None of this applies to FOSS, ever.
I can tell you why: it is just one little argument out of hundreds. It’s an example why “locked” and “unlocked” is misleading, too. We don’t need to change a misleading term to another even more misleading term. Another user made a much better suggestion:
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Also think about this:
How do you want to implement a term to the world if you cannot implement it in a little forum where all people have similar interests? I think you have two options. Discuss about other words or give up.
I like that you make thoughts about established things, but your new terms don’t seem to be the right way to make it better.
No, I have already successfully implemented the terms “Unlocked Software” and “Locked Software” in my conversations with non-techie people, so I am not faced with any such dilemma.
I think these terms are fine. Their meaning is essentially equivalent to Unlocked and Locked, so they solve the ambiguity of “Free” in the same way. However, I think they are less punchy and emotive than Unlocked and Locked, without providing any advantage, as far as I can tell, so I think the answer remains “Unlocked Software.”
It is not hard to implement it to newbies since they have no plan and trust everything you say. But once they want to search for “unlocked software” or speak with another person who knows a lot about free/libre software, problems starting.
I also could tell newbies that floss is resource hungry software, because it has a loot of unused code - like the meet between the tooth you can get rid of with dental floss. They would trust me.
On web search “unrestricted software” results does also not speak about FOSS, but the results are close like my first result: “Work with Software Restriction Policies Rules | Microsoft Learn”. That gives already an much better idea than “unlocker - software to delete even locked files on Windows” or “Android unocker”, “pcunlocker” that recover passwords. And just that you know: I typed in “unlocked software” not “unlocker”.
However, you know my arguments. Do what you think it’s right, I don’t want to stop you (just wanted to share my opinion, nothing more).
