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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

The first sentence on "https://lasso.entrouvert.org/" starts:

> Lasso is a free software C library [...]

I wish people would stop saying "free software".

It was confusing from the beginning, and hasn't stopped being confusing.

Imagine RMS saying, "I'm glad you asked that. By 'free', we don't mean free as in beer (nor what everyone means when they search for some kind of 'free software'); we mean free as in freedom. Which I will proceed to speak about for half an hour, now that you're engaged by this small bit of wordplay that you had no reason to suspect was wordplay."

(Not that the ambiguity of "free software" was the cause of the Orange violation of Lasso. But, really, please stop calling it "free". Say "GPL", or some other license, or "libre", or anything other than "free".)

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Ironically the French language makes the distinction where English doesn't:

Libre - free as in 'You are free to do as you wish.'

Gratuit - free as in 'I’ve got two free tickets for the film.'

I wouldn't call it ironic, I'm pretty sure there's two separate words for free in the vast majority of languages. English is the outlier, not the other way around.

English used to have "gratis", but it’s not used anymore.

In French (which matters in this particular case since all actors are French) there is no confusion between "logiciel libre" and "logiciel gratuit" though. There isn't a word that can mean both.

I think these days in English the acronym FLOSS is the most common word for free as in freedom software.

Nah you got it backwards. Stop using "Open". It cheapens and confuses the goals and purpose of Free software.

I think it's fair to say -- sadly -- that most people don't even know of the FSF's goals, and think "free software" and "open source software" are the same thing. And I don't think we're going to fix that problem by insisting random people use the terms properly.

"Free" is a terrible word to use in English for this concept. It gives the absolute wrong impression, and no one is going to sit through RMS lecturing about "free as in speech, not as in beer". It's a pity English has such a common word with two meanings like that.

To use your phrasing, the choice of the world "free" cheapens (literally!) and confuses the goals and purpose of free software.

If your slogan requires that you define a word or words in it, it's probably not a good slogan.

Should've named it Freedom Software. As an additional bonus it would instantly win over half of the US population.

To be fair, the second sentence is

> Lasso is [...] licensed under the GNU General Public License

Agreed, I think this is something the English language community should solve.

IMHO, I think “free” should be reserved for the wider meaning encompassing all the various aspects of freedom.

And a (new?) word like “gratis” should be used for the you-dont-have-to-pay-money-for-this-now meaning.

"Gratis" isn't new in English; unfortunately it's just fallen out of use.

The problem is that even if we were to re-adopt a word like "gratis", it would take decades, at best, before using "free" to mean the same thing would fall out of the collective consciousness. So even if people agreed to start using "gratis" to mean "without monetary cost", you'd still end up with plenty of people getting the wrong impression from a term like "free software".

The best way to fix it is to have a new word for free-as-in-speech. If we could adopt "libre", and start calling it "libre software", it would probably require less explanation. Or, rather, it might still sometimes require explanation (because some people just won't know what "libre" means at all), but it won't cause people to immediately assume the wrong thing, at least.

(I also enjoyed another poster's suggestion to call it "freedom software", and thus immediately gain the support of a certain half of the US population that tends to shut off their brains when they hear the word "freedom".)

Or at the very least call it capitalised Free Software, to make it clear you're using a marketing term (in this case, RMS's).

It can't be that bad considering they actually delivered and achieved the goal of an entirely free Unix clone.

Yes, but even reading your sentence, it's not clear whether you intend to mean that unix clone is without cost, or libre. I think most people (especially non-technical people) would assume the former.

Why have I never heard this argument applied to the concept of free speech?

Because software is often sold/licensed for money and "speech" isn't?

Sponsorships seem to counter that point

Because "free speech" as a term of its own is already well-known and well-defined, fairly universally in US culture. "Free software" is only known in tech circles, and even then it isn't always particularly well-known or well-understood.

In a way it's an education problem, but it's also a "why should I care about this topic?" problem, for which the vast majority of people will -- quite reasonably -- answer "I shouldn't".

> In a way it's an education problem, but it's also a "why should I care about this topic?" problem, for which the vast majority of people will -- quite reasonably -- answer "I shouldn't".

This can also be applied to free speech, or just freedom in general. People are quite happy to trade convenience for liberty in society. Does that mean we should settle for "I shouldn't care" as an answer? I certainly am not going to.

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