Les Mikesell <lesmikesell <at> gmail.com> writes: > On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 14:02, Mark Wielaard wrote: > > ``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand > > the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as > > in ``free beer.'' > > Yes, if you define liberty as being restricted... > > No definition of free or liberty but the unique FSF version can make > that understandable. Since I am not a native English speaker, and my native language does have word that expresses "Freedom" which isn't similar to "Gratis" I don't have so much trouble with the word Free. Don't get all hung up about the word Free, Libre, Livre, Vrij, etc. In the end it is about the freedom to share and the freedom to protect our community. See the following video from Mark Webbink, Deputy General Counsel for Red Hat. It explains how this works. http://www.redhat.com/magazine/006apr05/features/licenses/ The term "Free and Open Source Software," or FOSS for short, has come to represent software that falls under one of two definitions: the Free Software Definition of the Free Software Foundation, or the Open Source Definition of the Open Source Institute. These licenses differ slightly, but they agree fundamentally on three freedoms: * The freedom to copy * The freedom to make derivative works * The freedom to redistribute There are many open source licenses of various kinds, and all of them agree absolutely on the nature of the first two freedoms. But the third freedom—freedom to redistribute—is trickier. Two prominent licenses, the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the Berkeley Software Distribution License (BSD) differ on this key point. Mark explains the implications of these differences, and why they matter. Cheers, Mark
