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Comment by kowdermeister | Hacker News Reader

If that's the intent behind "free software" I'd call it "liberty software" or "liberated software".

I'm not a native English speaker so it might have things attached I don't know about.

Yes, this is indeed a problem of english semantics, which is why the term "libre software" is sometimes offered as an alternative. "Libre" is a french word that means that part of "free" that free software cares about (ie not the cheap part)

Oh, I thought it came from Spanish, with the same meaning.

It comes from the same latin origin, I don't think we can link it to one language more than to the other.

This is actually a "known bug". It is more specifically called "libre" software, and the idiom "Free as in 'beer' versus Free as in 'speech'" comes up to help illustrate the difference in meaning.

"Liberty software" should be correctly understood by a native English speaker. That being said, it is a bit awkward... I interpret "Liberty ${OBJECT}" as an Americanism[0]. Though, I'd be interested in the perspectives of people outside North America...

As someone else pointed out, "liberated software" is past tense, where a previous state is implied.

[0] Anecdotal, but take a look at Wikipedia's "Liberty" disambiguation page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_(disambiguation) most examples of "Liberty ${OBJECT}" are American based.

Free as in freedom is a very old and established definition of the word. It is also very engrained in the American consciousness.

Liberated software sounds like closed source that someone leaked the code for, or just a euphemism for pirated software.

I have written about it elsewhere but it is worth repeating here. RMS prefer liberty software but because of US politics he choose to use free software in order to not associate the free software movement with the United states libertarian political platform.

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