License Approval Process

David Johnson arandir at meer.net
Wed Feb 16 04:07:07 UTC 2000


On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Andrew J Bromage wrote:

> <soapbox>
> Contrary to popular belief, "free speech" (as RMS describes it) is not
> the same as "free time".  "Free time" has no strings attached, whereas
> "free speech" has implied responsibilities.  Unfortunately, the FSF
> have never AFAIK noted that English has at least _three_ definitions of
> the word "free", which makes the term "free software" that much more
> confusing.
> </soapbox>

Actually, my dictionary has 17 definitions. Consider "free verse", "free
electon", "free nation", "free to use", etc. Although most of these 17
definitions are only slight variations of others, there are certainly more than
three broad definitions of "free" in the english language.

Using Richard's definitions, "Free Software" is as unrelated to "Free Speech"
as it is to "Free Beer".

-- 
Arandir...
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http://www.meer.net/~arandir/



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