David (version 3)

I'm David Fifield.

I think the GNU Go page should call GNU Go "free software," but I don't want to make a bug fuss about it. Here's what I wrote in Messages to People Currently Present in the Library:

The terms " free software" and " open-source software" mean approximately the same thing; see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html. The important thing to remember is that the "free" in "free software" means freedom, not price (free software is not necessarily non-commercial software; see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html).

Because GNU Go is part of the GNU Project, which always uses "free" to describe its software, I suggest that the GNU Go page should too. If the authors of that page (Frs mainly, I guess) insist on calling it "open-source", please at least hyphenate the term when it's used as an adjective (see the note about usage at the bottom of http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/open-source.html).

Thanks, Andrew Walkingshaw; the page looks good now. As I said above, I don't want to make a big deal out of this sort of thing. Many people seem to find talk about software freedom tiresome, and that's not what this wiki's about, anyway. It is, however, a great interest of mine, and I'll be very happy to talk about it with anyone who's interested.

If you wish, you can leave messages discussing this matter here, or email me at david@bamsoftware.com.

Jan: Hi David, welcome to Sensei's! If I may discuss other matters, what I'd like to know is when and why, what grade do you (think you) play, where do you live, what brought you to SL...?

Hello, Jan. Thanks for the welcome. I live in Colorado, USA. I learned go in middle school from a friend of mine. I don't know my rank, but I consider myself a relatively poor player (probably about 20k). Of course, I've become much better since I started visiting Sensei's Library!

I can't remember how I found this site except that I must have followed a link from somewhere. It very quickly became one of my favorite sites.

(By the way, Jan: Much respect to the functional programmer!)