Like many posters here, I've been using the term foss or floss fairly
regularly. I like the term foss because it's the old Yorkshire (God's
own county!) name for a waterfall[1]. The most beautiful of these is
Jennet's or Janet's Foss in Malhamdale, close to Gordale Scar, one of
the most striking geological features in the uk. You can see the
waterfall here: http://www.malhamdale.com/janetsfoss.htm and Gordale
Scar here: http://www.malhamdale.com/gordalescar.htm. The scar is so
huge that you really need to see a picture with people in it in order to
grasp the scale of it.
Note 1: like much Yorkshire dialect, its roots are in Old Norse.
The was considered by most artists to be unpaintable until one James
Ward (1769-1859) created an enormous canvass, complete with a few cattle
and a little water in order to show scale and perspective. A sketch for
"gordale scar" can be seen here:
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=15925&searchid=10213
The picture now hangs in the National Gallery after years of being in
storage.
Okay, that's foss covered... a nice word, implying a neverending flow
of software, an aspect of great natural beauty, leading to a pool of
software below the foss, clean, pure and uncorrupted.
Floss, however, I'm not so keen on. Floss might be "candy-floss". The
term candy is popular with the great grand-parents of the UK, but for
younger generations, they would use the word "sweet". The exception,
though, is candy-floss, a beach favourite with young children. So, it
tastes nice, is somewhat addictive, gives a sugar hit, but in the end,
is not really good for you, certainly, unlike the foss above, not
something you could consume in large quantities.
So, both words are interesting, and have some positive side, but foss
seems to be the winner. The question for me, though, is whether it's
the right word at all. Foss is really an acronym, free open source
software. Put the 'l' in and you add libre, deriving from liberare,
latin "to (set) free, release, exempt". Admirable stuff, but
unfortunately, it rather assumes that the reader knows where to go in
order to find the root of the word, that they know, basically, to go to
the FSF's pages and look up some of RMS's writings.
So, I'd like to propose a new word, one which I think has the right
connotations, and whilst it perhaps lacks the poetic beauty of foss, it
more than makes up for it by providing a more clear link back to the FSF
and the GPL. Here it is: gloss. Now, don't be confused, the 'l' here
isn't for libra (£, pound), nor for libre, it just means licensed. It
goes like this:
GNU
Licensed
Open
Source
Software
Gloss.
The english term gloss, of course, can be an adjective, for example,
gloss-paint being shiny, reflective, paint; it can be a noun, since you
can "put a gloss" on something, ie., make it look good. It can also be
a verb, combined with 'up' we can "gloss something up", ie., make it
good, make it better, improve it.
Thus, summing up, whilst foss is about flow, natural beauty and purity,
floss is about sweetness but with a risk factor, gloss, instead, is
about making things good, about improving them. This, to my mind,
has all the right connotations, whilst keeping the inherent reference
to GNU licensing in there.
I say to you all, go out and gloss-up your computers, make them shiny,
put a gloss on them, in them, and around them. Use gloss wherever you
can. Most importantly, use gloss to liberate yourselves from props,
proprietary software. No computer should need props in order to work,
whilst every software project should have gloss.
--
| mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| Open platforms prevent vendor lock-in. Own your Own services! |
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