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[Michael T. Richter]

On Wed, 2006-22-11 at 00:15 +0100, Mario Vukelic wrote:

> > Because one of Stallman's greatest errors was use of a word -- "free



> That's more a deficiency of the English language I think. 


Richard Stallman is, presumably, aware that he is communicating in this
"deficient" language.  He therefore, had he been truly interested in
avoiding this problem, should have thought of better wording.  (Of
course this is the person who thought "GNU's Not UNIX" was a good pun
and that a name that he pronounces as "Guh-New" would be a name that
would catch on....)

What alternatives could he have chosen?  Well, for openers, he could
have been more specific about what was free.  "Free Software" sounds
like "Free Beer" to most people, not "Free Speech".  Why is this?
Because software is, in the minds of the overwhelming majority of
English speakers, a commodity, not an ideal.  So the version of "free"
that would be attached to "software" in the overwhelming majority of
English speakers' minds is "free = doesn't cost anything" not "free =
liberated".  So he could have used "free" and still been more specific:
"free source software" for example, to pick an example off the top of my
head.

Other ideas he could have used that would be more accurate, more pithy
or both:

      * liberated software
      * unencumbered software
      * anti-proprietary software
      * restraint-free software
      * unconstrained software
      * unrestricted software
      * unfettered software
      * open source software (sorry, just had to add that one! ;) )
      * emancipated software
      * freed software
      * liberal software (in the old sense of the term "liberal")
      * libertarian software (in what old-school "liberal" had to rename
        itself to)
      * unconfined software


There's a baker's dozen ideas that are more accurate and less prone to
confusion that I came up with given literally five minutes' (or less)
thought.  And I'm not devoting my whole future to a concept that is of
overriding importance to me.  I really do think that RMS could have done
much better had communicating his idea been higher up in his priorities.


> I'm not a native speaker, but to me "free" clearly
> seems to mean both things and there is no substitute.


Here's some other words you might want to look up:

      * http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=free&x=0&y=0


-- 
Michael T. Richter
Email: ttmrichter at gmail.com, mtr1966 at hotpop.com
MSN: ttmrichter at hotmail.com, mtr1966 at hotmail.com; YIM:
michael_richter_1966; AIM: YanJiahua1966; ICQ: 241960658; Jabber:
mtr1966 at jabber.cn

"I would not flinch from sacrificing a million lives for India's
liberty!" --Mahatma Gandhi
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