> free software
it seems like this term is misunderstood in English to mean "no money" .. perhaps "Libre Software" is a better starting description here
it seems like this term is misunderstood in English to mean "no money" .. perhaps "Libre Software" is a better starting description here
I can never remember which way around this is. I think the "beer" is supposed to be free in the monetary sense and "speech" is supposed to be free in the rights/liberty sense, but the analogy doesn't actually convey this:
- Speech is normally both monetarily free and (in certain places) a right
- Beer is normally neither monetarily free or a right. But may make you "feel" free, which is another sense entirely.
Is this a cultural reference I'm missing?
Now someone tells you, “There’s free speech at Oktoberfest.” Is your first thought that there’s no monetary cost to expression, or that the expression is unencumbered by particular legal restrictions?
(Happily, Oktoberfest has both.)
Think of them as the _slightly_ longer "Free as in 'free beer' " and "Free as in 'free speech' ". When beer is described as “free,” it’s understood to be gratis. When speech is described as free, it’s understood to be libre. These are used as examples for more ambiguous situations, since software can be one, the other, both, or neither.
Former is gratis, latter is libre.
TBH the main place I've seen the phrase "free beer" is a Simpson's joke: people stand in front of a sign saying "free beer", but after Homer drinks many cups, the sign is revealed in full to say "alcohol-free beer, $5/cup".
It's understood that beer normally costs money, so the setup of the joke is that "free beer" is understood without explanation as "beer without costing money".
"free as in speech, not beer":
"free speech", the right to say what you want without legal restrictions from the state
"free beer", beer you don't need to pay for
Nothing to do with beer making you "feel free" (?) or whatever
Then again, free speech is not about being able to modify speech, release your own version of another's speech, and so on (e.g. the US has "free speech" but MLK's dream speech is still copyrighted).
Perhaps a better slogan would be:
"Free as in free sex, not beer"
And if the slogan wasn't meant for corporations too, and wasn't coined in the puritan 80s/90s, it might have been...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/28036/its-steal-how-colu...
They both fail to convey what it's really about.
And "free as in speech, not beer" actually does little to clarify it IMHO; it only works well if you're already familiar with the concept, but if you're not it only adds to the confusion (free speech is about the freedom to say what you want, so free software is about being able to write whatever software you want?)
Now, "free software as in right to repair" would actually clarify it, but trying to get an understandable message out seems to be "unethical" so meh :-/
Free software just isn’t enough anymore because the licenses limit your freedom too. (and even my choice of the word “limit” here will be controversial between the Apache/MIT and the *GPL crowds).
Don’t have an easy answer :-)
The problem is that merely right to repair doesn't cover all of Free Software so it will never catch on with the hard-core FSF crowd who seem to think that the only possible step is one giant leap to a Free Software utopia and than any smaller step in that direction is "unethical".
So I'm not really sure it has any more meaning than free software means no cost rather than "no one and everyone owns the software".
Price, functionality, availability, etc. all factor in. And the tricky thing with repairs is that it's a very "non-obvious" feature.
“Ability” is the wrong word here, why did you use that word? It’s ambiguous and misleading, that’s why it’s called the right to repair.
Yes most people do assume they have the right to modify and fix something they “own”, whether it’s a car or a computer or anything else. Don’t you think it’s surprising and non-obvious that you might not be allowed to repair something you paid for and own, even when you know how to repair it? Whether they ever intend to repair something, and whether they have the knowledge to repair something, are both irrelevant to whether they have the legal right to repair something.
> they keep buying products where it’s expressly not possible to repair it yourself or by a competent 3rd party.
Most people have no intention of repairing their technical purchases themselves, and that’s perfectly fine. Most people also don’t care about right to repair laws even if it affects them. The point of right to repair laws is to establish the common sense standard that consumers are allowed to legally modify their purchases, and companies will no longer be allowed to go out of their way to prevent repairs or make them difficult (also and perhaps especially wrt 3rd parties), and also that companies and lawmakers will no longer be able to make customizing and repairing purchased products illegal as has been done in the past.
Has been in the kind of news Joe Average doesn't give a fuck about and even if they watch, they forget in 10 minutes.
Techies spot mentions of it in the news because they already care for it and know the term.
That's not the same as something being in the news that reach regular people (that would be more like some high profile Hollywood divorse, some war, or gas prices).
No such thing. I'm fine with Joe Average, and I don't think everybody should know about everything, much less about the "right to repair" (much more important stuff for people to learn about, including politics and/or gas prices and other things that affect someone more).
I'm merely stating a fact: the "right to repair" is not something that has been covered in any degree for the regular persons to know or care about. Most of those that do are already familiar with the tech scene, if not as technies, then as gadget lovers and tinkerers.
Well, people understand it just fine.
It's just that the definitive allure of FOSS is not what the purists think it is.
purist: FOSS is about freedom (to work on the source, release changs as FOSS, etc)
real world: what I care about is 70% the code being available to use for free and 30% the ability for others (and me in some cases) to edit it and release my changes. Yeah, I do understand it's not the same as mere "freeware". But for most intents and purposes that the part I care most about, but I also like the FOSS aspect because it means I can get more community stuff for it, and I don't depend on a single vendor releasing it.
But we are on HN right now...
For you and me, maybe. But no, Free Software is often misunderstood. I had to explain the difference on a group dedicated to Linux the other day.
It is worth pointing out, every time.
To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.
GCC is an engineering marvel, and the basis of two generations of engineering by hundreds of people and companies. Rust joining one of the many languages supported by GCC and stack, is welcome here.