Gratis versus Libre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- "Gratis" redirects here. For the referral marketing company, see Gratis Internet.
- "Free as in freedom" redirects here. For the book by Richard Stallman, see Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software.
Gratis versus Libre is the distinction between zero price and freedom. Gratis is slowly becoming more common in the English language. However, libre has not, and no English adjective signifies freedom only. This distinction is imperative in dealing with information as property. The terms are often used in the open source community and the broader free culture movement.
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[edit] Gratis
Gratis is the plural ablative form of the first declension noun "grātia" in Latin and used as an adjective in various Romance and Germanic languages meaning "for nothing," in the sense that one does not have to pay for some good or service (free of charge).
[edit] Libre
- For the French pop album, see Libre (Sébastien Izambard).
Libre is a word in various Romance languages, e.g. Spanish and French (descended from the Latin word līber) that denotes the state of being free, as in "having freedom". GNU programmers often talk about free as in free speech (libre) and free as in free beer (gratis, gratuit), as the word free in English does not distinguish between these meanings. Free software (with a capital F) usually means the former. Generally, libre is open-source software, whereas gratis is just free.
[edit] Free as in beer versus free as in speech
In hacker slang, gratis is typically referred to as free as in beer while libre is referred to as free as in speech.[1][2]
Free as in beer refers to things which are available at no monetary cost (like free beer at a party). While one is permitted to utilize the object, one is not permitted to possess, modify, or reproduce the object. In the "free beer" scenario, this equates to being permitted to drink the beer, but neither to leave the party with the beer, nor to tamper with someone else's beer, nor to brew one's own; in the computer software scenario, gratis allows the user to install and operate the software, but neither to rebrand the software, nor to alter its method of operation, nor to create copies of the software for distribution.
By contrast, the expressions free as in speech, free as in freedom, and free as in rights, refer to something which is free of any and all restrictions, as in the freedom of speech. One is permitted to use the object, reproduce it, repurpose it, and generally do what one will with it; usually the only restrictions applied are that credit be given to any entity that contributed to any resulting object and that such object be free as in speech as well. An example of a license with such grants and conditions is the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.
Since the advent of the free software movement, these terms have entered frequent use for categorising computer programs according to the licenses and legal fetters that cover them, and both this expression and the term gratis are used to distinguish freeware (gratis software) from Free software. See: Alternative terms for free software.
