In my experience, most engineers have barely any understanding of the licencing side of open-source, but all of them use GitHub for "open-source". To me that i

In my experience, most engineers have barely any understanding of the licencing side of open-source, but all of them use GitHub for "open-source". To me that indicates a change in the societal meaning, as much as I agree that it is incorrect. You're right that people would and do mistake "free software" for "gratis", and sure that's something we need to work on. I just think the battle is lost with "open-source" and has been for a number of years now, and I can't fault a company, and specifically a marketing department, for getting on board with the way the term has changed rather than taking a principled stance.