Gratis versus Libre
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Gratis versus Libre is the distinction between no cost and freedom, a distinction not made by the word free.
This distinction is of supreme importance in dealing with information as property.
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Gratis
Gratis is a term in Latin and various Romance and Germanic languages meaning free, in the sense that one does not have to pay for some good or service (free of charge).
In hacker slang, another common term for gratis is free as in beer, as opposed to free, libre or free as in speech. This expression (as well as gratis itself) is used to distinguish gratis software from free software, which is free as in freedom.
Libre
Libre is a word in various Romance languages, e.g. Spanish and French (but not Latin itself, where the spelling is liber) that denotes the state of being free, as in "having freedom". GNU programmers often talk about free speech (libre) and free as in beer, as the word free in English does not distinguish between these meanings. Free software usually means the former.
Biocrawler, for example, is "The Free Encyclopedia" not only because users need not pay money, but because of the way it is edited and distributed.
Free as in beer
Free as in beer refers to things which are available at no monetary cost (like free beer at a party). It can be contrasted with the expressions free as in speech, free as in freedom, or free as in rights, which refer to something which is free of restrictions, as in the freedom of speech.
Since the advent of the free software movement, these terms have entered frequent use for categorising computer programs according to the licenses and legal fetters that cover them.
See also
External links and references
- Stallman's discussion of FreeAsInBeer (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FreeAsInBeer)id:Gratis
