Hacker News Reader

Comment by olivierestsage | Hacker News Reader

I support F(L)OSS, and this project is wonderful. As a native English speaker, though, I really regret the whole community's collective decision to choose "libre" to refer to software freedom. I understand the etymological origin, but -- to me -- saying "lee bruh" in English is like chewing tinfoil. It strikes me as a tragic failure of marketing.

I seem to remember that one of the names that was rejected in favor of LibreOffice was "Bureau." I wonder how a sleek name like that might have affected the program's fortunes?

View on HN

I sympathize with what you're saying, but IMHO "Bureau" invokes thoughts of authoritarian institutions.

Ministry of Freedom

As a native French speaker I don't see the problem with the prononciation of libre :)

I understand the arguments for using English as a universal language but in this case the word libre brings an other nuance (meaning) "libre" != "free"

I tend to nitpick in similar ways. However, LibreOffice is used across language boundaries, and words like Free and Open don’t translate as well in my opinion.

Was about to say this same thing. I feel like it has a very poor band association in my mind.

I don't understand this comment. The English language already has "libra", "library"... As someone who's fluent in English (but not a native speaker) there is no distinction.

It has to do with the rhythm of the way words are joined. I'm not a linguist, so I don't know the exact right term to use here, but in English there isn't usually that kind of "pause" sound between words/consonants-- whereas, in my limited knowledge of French, it seems like that is quite common (many words seem to end in -re).

Is that a glottal stop?

I looked it up and it seems I had the wrong pronunciation of "libre". It's pronounced completely different in French, I had no idea. But still, this feels like a non-issue to me. There's nothing wrong with pronouncing "libre" in a way that's more comfortable for English speakers (like Libra), as it would still be crystal clear what you're referring to in my opinion.

> It's pronounced completely different in French

For real? I thought both languages pronounced them like /libʁ/.

In English, pronouncing it similar to if it was (in French) libré, for the software sense, is quite common.

At least according to Google Translate, yes.

Lexical stress? https://youtube.com/watch?v=dUnGvH8fUUc

I understand it, I think. The shape your lips/mouth make for the 'li' in 'library' is different than for the 'li' in 'libre' (at least when I try to pronounce the latter as french 'libre' but with an English 'r' which I have the impression is how it's supposed to be done and is also what the parent indicates, might be wrong?). As a result there's this weird movement to go from 'lee' to 'br' and I have a hard time getting a typical English 'r' out of it which I have zero problems with in 'library'. Non-native English speaker as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com