« Alexa ranking in PHP again | Main | Stop Firefox from Changing size »
Free as in Beer
By maurizio | May 22, 2007
I was preparing some post about the software I use and I was about to write those words. Free as in beer. For you not in IT or for those people that doesn’t really know what Linux/BSD/GPL means it should sound strange. “Where did you get beer for free?” you are probably wondering.. well, let me explain it.
“Free as in beer” is a phrase people created because the English language isn’t clear enough about the word Free. Free in English could mean “freedom” or could mean “cost nothing”. Other languages use a Latin word to define the “cost nothing” word; they use “gratis”. So if you want to have something without paying, you have to use the word “Gratis” in Italy (or Germany).
Strangely enough, some English folk, instead of trying to use this “new” word (it’s strange because everybody knows that English like to create new acronyms/words), they preferred to use the easy-to-understand “free as in beer” phrase. If you actually think about it, it’s not that difficult to understand it. No one should misunderstand it.”I don’t know a beer with some freedom..”.
So when someone is telling you that Firefox and Internet Explorer are both free, you should say:
Yes, they are both “Free as in beer”, but Firefox is totally free.
You don’t pay both of them, but you can do whatever you want with Firefox: read the code, modify, you can even sell Firefox!
Well, sort of..there are still some limitation to Firefox freedom. Firefox itself is using one of the less restricted license, but the word “Firefox” and the logo are trademarked. You can still take the code, compile it and sell it with another name&logo. Would you like to try the brand new NafuraiFox? :-)
Topics: Content Creation | 3 Comments »
Read other related posts:
May 31st, 2007 at 5:06 am
[...] Free as in Beer [...]
June 11th, 2007 at 8:10 am
[...] Free as in Beer [...]
June 19th, 2007 at 12:44 am
[...] will explode. I should post it more often.. Let’s start with the Top 100 List of Free Games (free as in beer). I played at least 5 of them…I should probably stop blogging to try them [...]