IUseThis: Social Networking for Nerds

2007-11-12T16:40:00.002Z

I pay a lot of attention to software as you can tell by looking at the sidebar on the Deflexion.com home page, where I list tools and services that I use or that I'm considering using. I recently started using osx.iusethis.com to track the Mac OS X software that I use. It's an easy way to find out about updates, to learn about tips & problems from other users, and to learn about other software that I might like. Lots of people blog about the OS X software that they use and I often bookmark such posts in my del.icio.us bookmarks with the tag OSX, but it's overwhelming to go through these posts and decide what software I might actually want to try. IUseThis is a fun way to browse through software lists and quickly get a sense of what software might be useful to me. To me, IUseThis is an example of social networking for nerds. If you're a nerd like me and wondering what all the excitement about social networking is about, I recommend that you try IUseThis or some other object-centric social network service.

To learn about social networking, see:

Social network service at Wikipedia.org
Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship by danah m. boyd and Nicole B. Ellison

To learn about the distinction between object-centric social networks and ego-centric social networks, see:

Social Network Transitions by Fred Stutzman

I'm mainly interested in using object-centric social networks, such as IUseThis and social bookmarking services, and my guess is that this is also the case for my fellow nerds.

OSS, FOSS, and FLOSS

2007-06-21T18:23:00.000+01:00

At Slashdot there's an interesting discussion about OSI To Crack Down On "Open Source" Abusers, which begins with this:

"...the Open Source Initiative is getting tough on any vendors who claim to be open source despite not actually using a license approved by the OSI. In his blog post, OSI president Michael Tiemann writes..."

This discussion covers terminology issues that have been going on for at least 15 years. In a nutshell, here are the issues:

OSS or "open source software" is often interpreted to mean software for which the source code is available to the public
FOSS or "free open source software" is sometimes interpreted to mean free (as in gratis) OSS and sometimes interpreted to mean free (as in freedom or libre) OSS
FLOSS or "free/libre open source software" is usually interpreted to mean free (as in freedom or libre) OSS

Because of the ambiguous nature of the terms open source, OSS, FOSS, and free, I try to avoid all of them. For example, in my blog post about Freeing the IMAP Clients, I distinguish between free/gratis and free/libre.

My recommendation to everyone in the software community is that we banish ambiguous terms. Refuse to use the word free and instead use free/gratis (or gratis) and free/libre (or libre). If you use the phrase open source, clarify what exactly you mean by that. And if you mean free/libre open source software, use FLOSS -- don't use OSS or FOSS!

See Also: Alternative terms for free software at Wikipedia.org.