[Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

Mon May 31 10:52:01 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Mav wrote

>>>It [the combination of free as libre + gratis]
>>>is just the foundation upon which the free software movement is based.

>>This is really not true!

>Yes it is. *EVERYTHING* licensed under the GNU GPL can be used free of charge -
>whether or not you have access to it is a separate matter. You can charge money
>for the service of providing the software (even getting a profit from that) and
>also charge for the service, but you are not buying a license to use the
>software (which is the proprietary model).

I am at least in part misunderstanding you.
If what you mean by the «gratis» bit is that the ''licence''
(which provides the «libre» bit) is provided free of charge,
then you are certainly correct that this is essential to free software.

That said, I still don't think that it's really accurate
to say that «libre» + «gratis» is the foundation of the movement.
The foundation is purely «libre»; «gratis» is only a means to that end.

>The English language word 'free' isn't the best one for this.
>I will use gratis and libre from now on.

So are you explicitly including «copyleft»
as part of the meaning of your term "libre"?
If so, then that still might be confusing,
since there are other free/open people that say "libre"
in order to avoid confusion with «gratis»,
but they usually mean the same as the FSF does by "free",
which does not require «copyleft».

-- Toby