alt Hacker NewsThe "libre" terms originates from the "free software" movement which does not like the term "open source" on philosophical grounds. In English, "free" has multiple meanings, and the romance language-derived "libre" was chosen in the past to distinguish the movement's ideals from the use of "free as in beer".
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socalgal2 • today at 1:09 AM
You're not wrong but neither IMO is the person you're responding to. emacs wasn't renamed LibrEmacs. gcc wasn't renamed Librecc. "Libre" can both be trying to convey something, and an arguably a bad name that turn lots of people off.
I just wish more of these projects would be a bit more ambitious and put more focus in their communication on being good at what they do, rather than being free and made by idealists. They're branding themselves in a way that only really appeals to other techy idealists, while accidentally putting off a lot of potential users who are neither technical nor philosophical enough to know or care what a term like libre means. There's a lot of good, free software that is selling itself short by communicating more about being the latter than the former.