When I was coming up, hackers embraced both those definitions. "Information wants to be free" and "fuck corporations" were our guiding principles.

Edit: to the dead comment in reply to this one, of course it's more nuanced than "all information should be public at all times". It's almost like a 5-word axiom necessarily omits nuance in exchange for brevity.

Hackers also used to exhibit critical thinking skills, sheesh.

"Beer that fell off a truck" has a somewhat negative connotation, but FMHY-listed sites are generally not only free, but also high quality, especially the starred ones. Nowadays when I'm looking for a service to do something I just search FMHY instead of a search engine. Much better results.

They mean free as in a poem that can be recited by anyone who has listened to it previously.

Speech isn't a medium in this context.