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In the English language, saying that a product or service is "free" is commonly understood (and has always been understood) to mean "gratis, free as in beer." S
by pjlegato 10y ago
In the English language, saying that a product or service is "free" is commonly understood (and has always been understood) to mean "gratis, free as in beer." Stallman has spent the past several decades trying to get people to redefine "free" to primarily mean "libre" in the case of technology, a far less common usage of the word "free" in English.
This is what people mean when they say Stallman is trying to redefine "free."
- jordigh 10y ago> This is what people mean when they say Stallman is trying to redefine "free." I don't think so. I usually hear this argument from weak free license advocates who specifically object to the GPL, not to calling free software "free". Even anti-GPL advocates like OpenBSD and FreeBSD call their software free, because they're both older than the term "open source" and because they think they're free-er than the GPL, and they really do mean "unfettered" when they say "free". Everyone knows that "free" has two meanings, and free software isn't even a term that Stallman coined. It was called that before he came along, because there was no other name for open source. He just insisted on it.