alt Hacker News> That doesn’t mean “free as in beer,” but “free as in speech.”
It occurs to me that this is a rather US-centric analogy.
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Free Software should rename to Liberty Software. Instead, advocates loaned Spanish "libre" in the ugly FLOSS acronym (Free/Libre Open Source Software). If only we used "liberty" then we could stop quibbling over the multiple meanings of "free" and just talk about software liberty.
"Free as in bonus" vs "free as in liberty".
The current socio-political climate is actually making this analogy less US-centric by the day :(
edit: I'm specifically referring to people losing their jobs and similar retaliations due to being on the left, or making public statements that the current administration and supporters don't like.
Ah, this is the first time I understand the analogy because my mother tongue has two different words for "free", so I did not realize there was a need to differentiate
I see it as English-centric, rather than US-centric. That differentiation isn't necessary in most (all?) languages.
Adopting the word "gratis" when the speaker means "at no monetary cost" also helps clarify things.