Re: Open source - Free software

[Al Klein]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 23:18:02 -0400, Barry Margolin
<barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

>While it may be a shame, they've been using the phrase for about 20 
>years now.  It's become part of the industry lexicon.  Similarly, we 
>have the jargon "freeware" that refers to software distributed at no 
>cost.  So there shouldn't be much ambiguity when the context is 
>understood

Since most people who use software aren't part of "the industry", and
understand "free" to mean "without charge", the phrase merely
technospeak - the majority of the world will continue to consider
software attached to the word free as being software without charge.
As does acf.

>AFAIK, there's no other common term for what is called "free software", 
>so it's the only phrase we can conveniently use.

Then maybe it's time we coined a term for it that's not obfuscatory.
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