On Mon, 2003-09-15 at 08:50, Michael Ryan Byrd wrote: > When people say, "free as in beer" do they mean: > > 1-"you have the freedom to get it, but it will cost you $12.99 for an 18 > pack--like at 7-11" > > 2-it actually costs nothing, (like at a University of Utah kegger?)
I think this is what they mean, free as in "free beer" is, I believe, the un-abbreviated analogy. People just get lazy and say free as in beer. Personally I think this obsession with free beer is the number one reason why the Church has not more fully embraced the Open Source movement. That and the long hair and overgrown beards. > > Why do people say that anyway? Is it common to give beer away? That sounds like > a bad business model to me. > > To be less confusing, if they really mean that there is NO COST, maybe they > should say, "Free as in air." I would have said, "free as in water," but there > are growing numbers of morons who buy bottled water (evian/naive.) I think in most other languages there are two words, one for free as in freedom, and one for free as in "free beer." We don't have that luxury in English. Some people always talk about software libre, mixing English and some other language's (Spanish? French?) word for free as in freedom. Others prefer to refer to it as Open Source software to avoid confusion, which upsets Richard Stallman and causes these unnecessary divisions among the free-as-in-freedom software supporters. Ahh English. Bryan P.S. Maybe since I served my mission in Croatia, I'll start using the Croatian word and talk about slobodan software. ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
