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techAdmin
Status: Site Admin
Joined: 26 Sep 2003
Posts: 4127
Location: East Coast, West Coast? I know it's one of them.
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For some reason two of the forum names just aren't working for me quite right, the two software fora.

Can anyone think of a better way to divide or name these? Adding another forum is fine. The open source one I see more pointed to projects like phpbb etc, but it seems reasonable to have standard open source apps in there too, but I'm afraid it's too confusing to regular users who don't know the difference. Maybe different names for the fora?

I like the other forum titles, they seem to be pretty descriptive, and to hold their material correctly, but these two are missing something.

any feedback appreciated, thanks.
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vkaryl
Status: Contributor
Joined: 31 Oct 2004
Posts: 273
Location: back of beyond - s. UT, closer to Vegas than SLC
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Well, maybe for the first one "Freeware/Open Source Software", and for the other one "Proprietary/Commercial Software"? It does say that in the expanded title, of course.....

Part of the problem may be that some freeware is NOT Open Source by definition.... and some of the commercial apps ARE Open Source. There's a few meshing areas....
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techAdmin
Status: Site Admin
Joined: 26 Sep 2003
Posts: 4127
Location: East Coast, West Coast? I know it's one of them.
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Yes, exactly, that's the problem with the naming, freeware is not open source, and is not technically even free software, in the sense of free as in liberty, source code available etc. Freeware is free as in beer.

But freeware doesn't concern me that much. Although I do tend to think of freeware as simply free commercial software. Odd as that might seem. AVG for example. It's free, but it's really designed to attract users to the purchased versions. Or to other products sold by that software company.

I think my main concern is that if a user who has never been here is looking at the categories, they will generally place their posting in the correct one without having to do any thinking. Something is wrong with the current version, but I think it may be just a question of language.

Maybe the definitions are too precise, maybe a 'software applications' type forum, that would handle most basic binary packages, then an open source projects one, but even that doesn't seem right, a product like nmap for example is a binary available for windows, but it's really a serious linux networking tool, one of the most famous open source applications out there, which to me doesn't belong in a forum about word 2003 macros or whatever.

<added>After tweaking it a little bit... Hmm, OK, that's a little better, but it's still not quite right. But better. More likely a user will put question in correct forum now I think, hope so anyway, that's assuming they read...
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