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Warp wrote:
| "J�r�me M. Berger" <jeb### [at] freefr> wrote:
|> |   "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.
|
	You would think that in the eleven dictionary definitions that come
before "you don't have to pay" there would be one that fit, and lo!
There is! The first definition states:

1. Someone or something that is free is not restricted, controlled
or limited, for example by rules, customs, or other people.

	This is perfectly applicable to software and has nothing to do with
how much you pay. Of course, by this definition GPL software isn't
any more free than POV, but that was my point...

		Jerome
- --
+------------------------- Jerome M. BERGER ---------------------+
|    mailto:jeb### [at] freefr      | ICQ:    238062172            |
|    http://jeberger.free.fr/     | Jabber: jeb### [at] jabberfr   |
+---------------------------------+------------------------------+
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