6 ms·

The term has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. It doesn't take much to say "free as in speech, not beer" to

by rascul 4y ago

The term has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. It doesn't take much to say "free as in speech, not beer" to the few people left who need to understand it.

nicoburns 4y ago
> free as in speech, not beer I can never remember which way around this is. I think the "beer" is supposed to be free in the monetary sense and "speech" is supposed to be free in the rights/liberty sense, but the analogy doesn't actually convey this: - Speech is normally both monetarily free and (in certain places) a right - Beer is normally neither monetarily free or a right. But may make you "feel" free, which is another sense entirely. Is this a cultural reference I'm missing?
- dolni 4y ago
  The first amendment to the US Constitution provides very strong protection for the right to free speech. Presumably that is the origin of "free as in speech".
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    Right, but what about "free as in beer"?
    - iex_xei 4y ago
      If I buy you a beer, that's free beer for you.
      - klyrs 4y ago
        Which, unless you're my friend, prompts the questions "what else is in this beer" and "what's in it for you." I believe that to be a deliberate choice in the "free as in beer" analogy.
    - msbarnett 4y ago
      "Free-as-in-speech, not free-as-in-beer" is just expecting you the hearer to understand that while event advertisements might prominently feature the words "free beer" as an exciting statement that beer is being given away for zero cost to drive interest, zero cost is not the sense in which "free" is being used in "free software"
  - kragen 4y ago
    No, the idea of freedom of speech predates the US Constitution, by decades, centuries, or millennia, depending on your definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File:Freedom_of_Thought_Ben_Franklin.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_development_and_suppression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_Licensing_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_Act#Freedom_of_the_Press_Act_of_1766_and_the_Age_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_A...
    - dolni 4y ago
      Do you think that the free software movement would have adopted "free as in speech" if the US was hostile to free speech?
      - kragen 4y ago
        Certainly, but it would have started somewhere that wasn't hostile to free speech. The Netherlands 20 years from now, maybe, or Korea when the computer is invented 150 years in the future in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
- chrisoverzero 4y ago
  It’s not as complex as you’re choosing to make it. When someone tells you, “There’s free beer at Oktoberfest,” is your first thought that the beer has no monetary cost, or that the beer is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? Now someone tells you, “There’s free speech at Oktoberfest.” Is your first thought that there’s no monetary cost to expression, or that the expression is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? (Happily, Oktoberfest has both.) Think of them as the _slightly_ longer "Free as in 'free beer' " and "Free as in 'free speech' ". When beer is described as “free,” it’s understood to be gratis. When speech is described as free, it’s understood to be libre. These are used as examples for more ambiguous situations, since software can be one, the other, both, or neither.
  - ptspts 4y ago
    How do I get free beer at Oktoberfest?
    - apetresc 4y ago
      You don't, but the point is that if there was "free beer" at Oktoberfest the meaning would be unambiguous.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    what is free software?
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    pssst - there are two different words in German for these concepts
- eddd-ddde 4y ago
  Free as in beer, as when one refers to 'free beer' it's one that you don't pay for. When one says 'free speech' it's one that allows you to do what you want. Former is gratis, latter is libre.
- rgoulter 4y ago
  > Beer is normally neither monetarily free TBH the main place I've seen the phrase "free beer" is a Simpson's joke: people stand in front of a sign saying "free beer", but after Homer drinks many cups, the sign is revealed in full to say "alcohol-free beer, $5/cup". It's understood that beer normally costs money, so the setup of the joke is that "free beer" is understood without explanation as "beer without costing money".
  - shadowofneptune 4y ago
    Beer was once given away at taverns so people would stick around for the food, which had a price adjusted to make up for the beer. Freeware uses this model.
    - jcpst 4y ago
      This also works in the inverse. The kimmelweck sandwich has its orgins in the pubs of western New York. Some gave the sandwich for free, and it was so salty that incentive was created for adding some pints to the tab.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  The culture reference is to commercial goods (like beer) being given away at zero cost as a promotion. (“Beer” is probably not the best example but is conveniently terse; for Boomers, “toasters”—in reference to bank promotions—might be more culturally relevant, for younger generations “-to-play” in reference to F2P games might be, but neither rolls off the tongue as well.)
- coldtea 4y ago
  Probably you're overthinking it... "free as in speech, not beer": "free speech", the right to say what you want without legal restrictions from the state "free beer", beer you don't need to pay for Nothing to do with beer making you "feel free" (?) or whatever Then again, free speech is not about being able to modify speech, release your own version of another's speech, and so on (e.g. the US has "free speech" but MLK's dream speech is still copyrighted). Perhaps a better slogan would be: "Free as in free sex, not beer" And if the slogan wasn't meant for corporations too, and wasn't coined in the puritan 80s/90s, it might have been...
  - forgotloginonp4 4y ago
    Maybe something more comprehendable would be “free as in Postfix, not Gmail” in that anyone can freely implement an MTA or use existing FOSS, which is different from using for free Gmail, Facebook, first 3 months of AOL, first 10 albums from Columbia House, … https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-columbia-house-made-money-giving-away-music https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-colu...
goodpoint 4y ago
"free software" is still misleading and "free as in speech" is hardly accurate. They both fail to convey what it's really about.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
iib 4y ago
I have never understood why it was not called "Liberty Software" since the beginning. The confusion disappears, liberty exists in English as a sibling to "libre" from Spanish and French and everybody in the United States, where the term originally comes from, and the rest of the English-speaking world understands what it means. As for the grammar argument, you can--sort of--force `Liberty` to be an adjective (think "Liberty City").
- darksaints 4y ago
  IMO, Liberty Software sounds like a company or a brand, but free/libre are philosophical concepts. I think it's important that free/libre software be noted for it's philosophy, not it's affiliation to a specific organization.
Beltalowda 4y ago
I'm not so sure about that; I've certainly met plenty of people who did not understand it. HN is not representative of the wider tech community. And "free as in speech, not beer" actually does little to clarify it IMHO; it only works well if you're already familiar with the concept, but if you're not it only adds to the confusion (free speech is about the freedom to say what you want, so free software is about being able to write whatever software you want?) Now, "free software as in right to repair" would actually clarify it, but trying to get an understandable message out seems to be "unethical" so meh :-/
- atonse 4y ago
  There are probably even fewer people that know what right to repair is. Free software just isn’t enough anymore because the licenses limit your freedom too. (and even my choice of the word “limit” here will be controversial between the Apache/MIT and the *GPL crowds). Don’t have an easy answer :-)
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles it's fairly well known. And while there are undoubtable many people who don't know what it means, the basic idea is quite obvious from just those three words: "if I bought something, I should have the ability to repair it". The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catch on with the hard-core FSF crowd who seem to think that the only possible step is one giant leap to a Free Software utopia and than any smaller step in that direction is "unethical".
    - cmurf 4y ago
      Do many/most people really think they should have the ability to repair it? I'm not sure because they keep buying products where it's expressly not possible to repair it yourself or by a competent 3rd party. So I'm not really sure it has any more meaning than free software means no cost rather than "no one and everyone owns the software".
worik 4y ago
> The term [Free Software] has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. For you and me, maybe. But no, Free Software is often misunderstood. I had to explain the difference on a group dedicated to Linux the other day. It is worth pointing out, every time.

by rascul 4y ago

nicoburns 4y ago

> free as in speech, not beer I can never remember which way around this is. I think the "beer" is supposed to be free in the monetary sense and "speech" is supposed to be free in the rights/liberty sense, but the analogy doesn't actually convey this: - Speech is normally both monetarily free and (in certain places) a right - Beer is normally neither monetarily free or a right. But may make you "feel" free, which is another sense entirely. Is this a cultural reference I'm missing?

dolni 4y ago
The first amendment to the US Constitution provides very strong protection for the right to free speech. Presumably that is the origin of "free as in speech".
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Right, but what about "free as in beer"?
  - iex_xei 4y ago
    If I buy you a beer, that's free beer for you.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      Which, unless you're my friend, prompts the questions "what else is in this beer" and "what's in it for you." I believe that to be a deliberate choice in the "free as in beer" analogy.
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    "Free-as-in-speech, not free-as-in-beer" is just expecting you the hearer to understand that while event advertisements might prominently feature the words "free beer" as an exciting statement that beer is being given away for zero cost to drive interest, zero cost is not the sense in which "free" is being used in "free software"
- kragen 4y ago
  No, the idea of freedom of speech predates the US Constitution, by decades, centuries, or millennia, depending on your definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File:Freedom_of_Thought_Ben_Franklin.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#/media/File... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_development_and_suppression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_thought#History_of_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_Licensing_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne#Lapse_of_the_L... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_Act#Freedom_of_the_Press_Act_of_1766_and_the_Age_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_A...
  - dolni 4y ago
    Do you think that the free software movement would have adopted "free as in speech" if the US was hostile to free speech?
    - kragen 4y ago
      Certainly, but it would have started somewhere that wasn't hostile to free speech. The Netherlands 20 years from now, maybe, or Korea when the computer is invented 150 years in the future in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
chrisoverzero 4y ago
It’s not as complex as you’re choosing to make it. When someone tells you, “There’s free beer at Oktoberfest,” is your first thought that the beer has no monetary cost, or that the beer is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? Now someone tells you, “There’s free speech at Oktoberfest.” Is your first thought that there’s no monetary cost to expression, or that the expression is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions? (Happily, Oktoberfest has both.) Think of them as the _slightly_ longer "Free as in 'free beer' " and "Free as in 'free speech' ". When beer is described as “free,” it’s understood to be gratis. When speech is described as free, it’s understood to be libre. These are used as examples for more ambiguous situations, since software can be one, the other, both, or neither.
- ptspts 4y ago
  How do I get free beer at Oktoberfest?
  - apetresc 4y ago
    You don't, but the point is that if there was "free beer" at Oktoberfest the meaning would be unambiguous.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  what is free software?
- mistrial9 4y ago
  pssst - there are two different words in German for these concepts
eddd-ddde 4y ago
Free as in beer, as when one refers to 'free beer' it's one that you don't pay for. When one says 'free speech' it's one that allows you to do what you want. Former is gratis, latter is libre.
rgoulter 4y ago
> Beer is normally neither monetarily free TBH the main place I've seen the phrase "free beer" is a Simpson's joke: people stand in front of a sign saying "free beer", but after Homer drinks many cups, the sign is revealed in full to say "alcohol-free beer, $5/cup". It's understood that beer normally costs money, so the setup of the joke is that "free beer" is understood without explanation as "beer without costing money".
- shadowofneptune 4y ago
  Beer was once given away at taverns so people would stick around for the food, which had a price adjusted to make up for the beer. Freeware uses this model.
  - jcpst 4y ago
    This also works in the inverse. The kimmelweck sandwich has its orgins in the pubs of western New York. Some gave the sandwich for free, and it was so salty that incentive was created for adding some pints to the tab.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 4y ago
The culture reference is to commercial goods (like beer) being given away at zero cost as a promotion. (“Beer” is probably not the best example but is conveniently terse; for Boomers, “toasters”—in reference to bank promotions—might be more culturally relevant, for younger generations “-to-play” in reference to F2P games might be, but neither rolls off the tongue as well.)
coldtea 4y ago
Probably you're overthinking it... "free as in speech, not beer": "free speech", the right to say what you want without legal restrictions from the state "free beer", beer you don't need to pay for Nothing to do with beer making you "feel free" (?) or whatever Then again, free speech is not about being able to modify speech, release your own version of another's speech, and so on (e.g. the US has "free speech" but MLK's dream speech is still copyrighted). Perhaps a better slogan would be: "Free as in free sex, not beer" And if the slogan wasn't meant for corporations too, and wasn't coined in the puritan 80s/90s, it might have been...
- forgotloginonp4 4y ago
  Maybe something more comprehendable would be “free as in Postfix, not Gmail” in that anyone can freely implement an MTA or use existing FOSS, which is different from using for free Gmail, Facebook, first 3 months of AOL, first 10 albums from Columbia House, … https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-columbia-house-made-money-giving-away-music https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-colu...

goodpoint 4y ago

"free software" is still misleading and "free as in speech" is hardly accurate. They both fail to convey what it's really about.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

iib 4y ago

I have never understood why it was not called "Liberty Software" since the beginning. The confusion disappears, liberty exists in English as a sibling to "libre" from Spanish and French and everybody in the United States, where the term originally comes from, and the rest of the English-speaking world understands what it means. As for the grammar argument, you can--sort of--force `Liberty` to be an adjective (think "Liberty City").

darksaints 4y ago
IMO, Liberty Software sounds like a company or a brand, but free/libre are philosophical concepts. I think it's important that free/libre software be noted for it's philosophy, not it's affiliation to a specific organization.

Beltalowda 4y ago

I'm not so sure about that; I've certainly met plenty of people who did not understand it. HN is not representative of the wider tech community. And "free as in speech, not beer" actually does little to clarify it IMHO; it only works well if you're already familiar with the concept, but if you're not it only adds to the confusion (free speech is about the freedom to say what you want, so free software is about being able to write whatever software you want?) Now, "free software as in right to repair" would actually clarify it, but trying to get an understandable message out seems to be "unethical" so meh :-/

atonse 4y ago
There are probably even fewer people that know what right to repair is. Free software just isn’t enough anymore because the licenses limit your freedom too. (and even my choice of the word “limit” here will be controversial between the Apache/MIT and the *GPL crowds). Don’t have an easy answer :-)
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  Right to repair has been all over the news, including mainstream news, and least in tech circles it's fairly well known. And while there are undoubtable many people who don't know what it means, the basic idea is quite obvious from just those three words: "if I bought something, I should have the ability to repair it". The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catch on with the hard-core FSF crowd who seem to think that the only possible step is one giant leap to a Free Software utopia and than any smaller step in that direction is "unethical".
  - cmurf 4y ago
    Do many/most people really think they should have the ability to repair it? I'm not sure because they keep buying products where it's expressly not possible to repair it yourself or by a competent 3rd party. So I'm not really sure it has any more meaning than free software means no cost rather than "no one and everyone owns the software".

worik 4y ago

> The term [Free Software] has been around for decades now, and seems to be fairly well understood in the tech world. For you and me, maybe. But no, Free Software is often misunderstood. I had to explain the difference on a group dedicated to Linux the other day. It is worth pointing out, every time.