The article's author uses a less strict defintion of lock free where it's ok to use locks for individual atomic operations like counters. The author's definiti

The article's author uses a less strict defintion of lock free where it's ok to use locks for individual atomic operations like counters. The author's definition does not allow one to use locks to make individual operations atomic. A process could always crash after obtaining the lock, but before releasing it, causing the entire application to become stuck.