Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 22:06:03 -0700 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Jonathan M. Bresler" <jmb@hub.freebsd.org>, adsharma@sharmas.dhs.org Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Excellent Gartner Group report: Debunking Open Source Mythsc Message-ID: <4.2.2.20000130220321.0409e770@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20000130000622.7DD7314E12@hub.freebsd.org> References: <200001290632.WAA17774@c62443-a.frmt1.sfba.home.com>
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At 05:06 PM 1/29/2000 , Jonathan M. Bresler wrote: > "free as in beer"....if i drink this here beer (its a Bass Pale >Ale by appointment to her Majesty the Queen), then you can not drink >the very same beer. you could buy another and drink that, but its not >the same bottle of beer. Sort of a paraphrase of the old Buddhist saying: You can never drink the same beer twice. ;-) Seriously: the multiple meanings of the word "free" in the GNU rhetoric are intended to confuse. The word "free" is used as what rhetoricians call a "pivot word;" a subtle switch between meanings of the word in the middle of an argument leads to a fallacious conclusion. "Free software" is, as Richard Stallman might say, a "confusing term which it is best to avoid." ;-) --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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