Re: free in free beer? (News/2003/20030102.wml)
Hi,
On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 12:40:49AM -0500, James A. Treacy wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 06, 2003 at 10:31:58AM +0900, Tomohiro KUBOTA wrote:
> > > The Test Drive Program is a free service of HP.
> > I think that the "free" here is "free beer", not "free speech".
> Correct.
> > Debian always says "Debian is free software, in free speech
> > meaning, not free beer meaning"
This is from the starting page of http://www.debian.org, but its link
from "free" leads to the page http://www.debian.org/intro/free. There
exist lines like "When we speak of Free Software, we mean freedom, not
price." Please note the capitalization here :) I tend to use
capitalized "Free" for freedom/libre. But mandating this on Debian web
site may be too much. (I am suggesting to define the word Free
somewhere on web site like English contracts where lawyer defines many
capitalized words with specific meanings.)
I think this English use of "free" for HP service is OK since context
was clearly different from Free Software.
...
> the wrong idea. Not exactly a good way to get an idea out. Now if the
> term chosen had been 'social software'... :)
You must be kidding :) "social" has good tone in Europe but in the US,
it is very negative. "Free" in many senses have a very positive tone in
the US.
* free speech
* free bear
* free sex :)
* ...
No wonder RMS chose "free" over "social" or "community" when he started
FSF. Socialism and Communism are evil in the US.
PS: The Japanese word "Frii Sofutoueaa", a imported word combination,
used to be used exclusively for royalty-free licensing in Japan.
--
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Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org> Cupertino CA USA, GPG-key: A8061F32
.''`. Debian Reference: post-installation user's guide for non-developers
: :' : http://qref.sf.net and http://people.debian.org/~osamu
`. `' "Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software" --- Social Contract
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