"Free Beer" Vs "free Speech" Distinction
In software development, where the cost of mass production is relatively small, it is common for developers to make software available at no cost. One of the early and basic forms of this model is called freeware. With freeware, software is licensed free of charge for regular use: the developer does not gain any monetary compensation.
With the advent of the free software movement, license schemes were created to give developers more freedom in terms of code sharing, commonly called open source or free and open source software (called FLOSS, FOSS, or F/OSS). As the English adjective free does not distinguish between "for zero price" and "liberty", the phrases "free as in free beer" (gratis, freeware) and "free as in free speech" (libre, free software) were adopted. Many in the free software movement feel strongly about the freedom to use the software, make modifications, etc., whether or not this freely usable software is to be exchanged for money. Therefore, this distinction became important.
"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer."—Richard Stallman
These phrases have become common, along with gratis and libre, in the software development and computer law fields for encapsulating this distinction. The distinction is similar to the distinction made in political science between negative liberty and positive liberty. Like "free beer", positive liberty promises equal access by all without cost or regard to income, of a given good (assuming the good exists). Like "free speech", negative liberty safeguards the right to use of something (in this case, speech) without regard to whether in each case there is a cost involved for this use (you still have free speech even though it costs money to open a newspaper).
Read more about this topic: Gratis Versus Libre
Famous quotes containing the words free, beer, speech and/or distinction:
“It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“Gin for executions, beer for birthdays, wine for weddings.”
—P. J. Wolfson, John L. Balderston (1899–1954)
“Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses ... it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)