> |   "Free", in common parlance, means "you don't have to pay anything to
> | use it". Period. POV-Ray *is* free. You don't have to pay anything.
> |
>         That is actually the twelfth (!) definition in my dictionary
> (Collins Cobuild). The first eleven definitions deal with free as in
> "freedom" (i.e not a prisoner or not restricted)

  Which doesn't make sense with software, because a program is not a person.

  Can you say, for example, that a book is "free", according to those
definitions? What would that even mean? That it's not imprisoned?

  No, if you say that a book is free, it means you don't have to pay for it.

> or free as in
> "available" (i.e "Is this seat free?").

  Again, it doesn't make too much sense in relation to software. What would
it mean for a software to be "available"? With physical objects it makes
more sense because there's only one of it, and someone may have reserved
it for himself, so it's not available to others.

  The only stretched meaning for "available" with respect to software
would be as a synonym for "in distribution". In other words, the
software in question is being distributed, and not kept closed somewhere
where people don't have any access to it. Again, "free" doesn't describe
that situation at all.

  Even if you say "freely available", that usually means, in common parlance,
that you don't have to pay for it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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