The "free" in free software is (deliberately) ambiguous, a bit of wordplay that sometimes misleads people into thinking it means "#FreeAsInBeer" when really it means "#FreeAsInSpeech" (in Romance languages, these distinctions are captured by translating "free" as "libre" rather than "gratis").

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Despite a decade of energetic commons-enclosing, some of the staunchest bastions of openness and generativity continue to thrive, like #Wikipedia, an encyclopedia that isn't just #FreeAsInBeer, it's also #FreeAsInSpeech - free to mix and remix as you choose.

Here's a whole passel of delightful Wikipedia-generated search tools, the #SearchGizmos, a whole suite of special-purpose search tools that mine Wikipedia for informational goodies:

https://searchgizmos.com/

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The Greatest Internet Things Of All Time: the Internet Archive, aka The Wayback Machine, the history of over 807 billion web pages.
https://web.archive.org
#knowledge #freeasinbeer #freeasinspeech

The Greatest Internet Things Of All Time: The TOR Project.
https://www.torproject.org
#freeasinbeer #freeasinspeech

The Greatest Internet Things Of All Time: Wikipedia.
https://www.wikipedia.org
#knowledge #freeasinbeer #freeasinspeech

RT @doctorow@twitter.com

In 1998, another name was proposed for software licensed on "free" terms: #OpenSource. Nominally, this term was intended to resolve the ambiguity between #FreeAsInBeer and #FreeAsInSpeech - that is, to make it clear that "free software" didn't mean "noncommercial software." 36/

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1599770403714514945

In 1998, another name was proposed for software licensed on "free" terms: #OpenSource. Nominally, this term was intended to resolve the ambiguity between #FreeAsInBeer and #FreeAsInSpeech - that is, to make it clear that "free software" didn't mean "noncommercial software."

This was said to be necessary to resolve the fears of commercial firms that had been frightened away from free software due to a misunderstanding.

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Not many people know this, but before I transitioned, I was a hacker (the good kind), and free software activist. #Linux was my special interest for a decade.

So I am happy to be on Mastodon. It kinda makes me nostalgic. 🤓Free software is so important these days, when proprietary platforms can influence democratic elections, and promote hate.

Unfortunatly I have not touched code for 20 years, learning new tools is just too boring to keep me interested enough to do it.
#mastodon #freeAsInSpeech

@fsf When will you bring #rms back?

#gnu #fsf #gpl #freeasinspeech