Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 23:08:02 -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> So much for the "free" in "free software". If you can't actually use >> it without paying money, whether for the software or for some book, it >> isn't really free, is it? > > Please do not confuse the term 'free' in 'free software' with 'gratis'. > > 'Gratis', i.e. 'lacking a monetary price tag' is something *very* > different from the meaning of 'free' in 'free software'.
If you were referring to the "free" in "free Mumia Abu Jamal", I would agree with you. I don't think anyone would imagine that this phrase meant that someone was going to get Mumia Abu Jamal gratis. Like it or not, "free software" referring to "free as in beer" is probably the most common interpretation of the phrase for a native English speaker. Admittedly, I do not have a "scientific" survey handy. However, I just asked my wife--who has absolutely no interest in anything related to programming, has never heard of the FSF, Eric Raymond, nor the disagreement between those two camps, nor probably will she ever have an interest--what she thinks I mean when I say "free software". After getting over the "why are you asking such a stupid question" phase, the first thing that jumped to her mind was "free as in beer". You can stamp, growl, swagger, spit, curse, and bluster all you want on this point, but millions of English speakers are going to ignore you anyway. Lucky for most of them, they do not have to suffer the lectures of sociopolitically motivated language mavens trying to "correct" them from the error of mistaking the meaning of a phrase to be the normal meaning of that phrase. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
