> ""Open Source" at best weakens this tool, and as we've seen today, spreads confusion."

How does it spread confusion? How does it weaken free software? Open source and free software are just two different approaches to collaborative software development. There's no confusion in my mind about the benefits they both offer.

As for the GPL as a weapon, there's a reason why GPL is falling out of favour. If open source did not exist, most companies simply wouldn't bother sharing source code. How would that help you?

> "That laden false dichotomy died a long time ago. At best, one can speak of "short term pragmatism" vs "long term pragmatism"."

In general yes, but not in this case.

There's very little practical difference between free software and open source. Both have access to source code and freedom to distribute/modify/use that source code at their core. For the most part, the rules built up around open source and free software only have a practical impact on how it interacts with non-free software. So for example, having binary blobs in the Linux kernel. Note that whilst the Linux kernel is GPL2, it's still run as an open source project. Regardless of whether a project uses a free software licence, it's the ideological approach to non-free software that splits free software and open source.

You could argue that binary blobs in the Linux kernel are a case that can't be described as long term pragmatism, but what's the alternative? That the device without a free driver goes unused until it has one. It could be argued that the existence of binary-only driver releases hold back the long term goals of free software if they take away the desire to write free software drivers, but we can see that people still want free software drivers regardless. Nouveau is a good example, it's a project that's been going for years with almost nonexistent assistance from NVIDIA, and has never matched the performance of the closed source NVIDIA drivers, but people still continue developing it despite the obstacles, and people continue using it despite the lower performance. If short term pragmatism damaged long term pragmatism then projects like Nouveau most likely wouldn't exist, as it's hard to argue against the fact that the NVIDIA closed-source drivers are the superior choice in the short term.