faif-2.0

167
says he argued for Stallman’s inclusion to no avail. The snub rumor
gained additional strength from the fact that O’Reilly, the event’s
host, had feuded publicly with Stallman over the issue of softwaremanual
copyrights. Prior to the meeting, Stallman had argued that
free software manuals should be as freely copyable and modifiable as
free software programs. O’Reilly, meanwhile, argued that a valueadded
market for nonfree books increased the utility of free software
by making it more accessible to a wider community. The two had
also disputed the title of the event, with Stallman insisting on “Free
Software” rather than “Freeware.” The latter term most often refers
to programs which are available gratis, but which are not free software
because their source code is not released.
Looking back, O’Reilly doesn’t see the decision to leave Stallman’s
name off the invite list as a snub. “At that time, I had never met
Richard in person, but in our email interactions, he’d been inflexible
and unwilling to engage in dialogue. I wanted to make sure the GNU
tradition was represented at the meeting, so I invited John Gilmore
and Michael Tiemann, whom I knew personally, and whom I knew
were passionate about the value of the GPL but seemed more willing to
engage in a frank back-and-forth about the strengths and weaknesses
of the various free software projects and traditions. Given all the later
brouhaha, I do wish I’d invited Richard as well, but I certainly don’t
think that my failure to do so should be interpreted as a lack of respect
for the GNU Project or for Richard personally.”
Snub or no snub, both O’Reilly and Raymond say the term “open
source” won over just enough summit-goers to qualify as a success.
The attendees shared ideas and experiences and brainstormed on how
to improve free software’s image. Of key concern was how to point
out the successes of free software, particularly in the realm of Internet
infrastructure, as opposed to playing up the GNU/Linux challenge to
Microsoft Windows. But like the earlier meeting at VA, the discussion
soon turned to the problems associated with the term “free software.”
O’Reilly, the summit host, remembers a comment from Torvalds, a
summit attendee.
“Linus had just moved to Silicon Valley at that point, and he explained
how only recently that he had learned that the word ‘free’ had
two meanings – free as in ‘libre’ and free as in ‘gratis’ – in English.”