This is about some nerd telling me my Linux issues don’t exist and I just need X distro?
… such as?
Confusing “FOSS” with “free software” comes to mind.
Confusing “FOSS” with just “Open Source” seems like the more typical offender.
Count Me in the confused group, I thought FOSS was free as in speech software
English is a horrible language full of ambiguity. F/LOSS is libre, but not necessarily gratis.
Isn’t it usually the opposite, gratis (because if it’s open source, you could just build it yourself, unless there’s a proprietary build env or hosted env) but not necessarily libre (because of the license?)
So wouldn’t gratis normally be the superset of libre.
Then there’s a set of gratis but not open source… someone should do a venn diagram.
All natural human languages have ambiguity. English is no better or worse than any other.
What’s gratis?
It means ‘free of charge’. It’s an English word, but pretty rare, I think. More common in other languages.
Wait, but persona non gratis can’t possibly mean a person who isn’t free as in beer, can it? You can’t have Me for free, I’ll only sell My sex for money.
Not sure if you’re joking or not, but it’s persona non grata.
Persona non grata means person not welcome.
Gratis is free of charge, or you are welcome to take it.
Actually, both “persona non grata” (latin has cases) and “gratis coffee/beer/bootloader” both make sense.
Just convert the “x is gratis” into “you’re welcome to [relevant-action-verb] x”.
As in, “The kernel is gratis” = “You’re free to [use] the Kernel” (which is basically “it’s free” in everyday english).
For “Persona non grata” it would be “(You’re a) person not welcome (to [come] here)”.
This is what it originally meant. It has nothing to do with price and everything to do with gratuity. I (a provider) am grateful to you and welcome you to use/come/see/do/whatever.
“Gratis” would be the ketchup packet at McDonalds - they’re happy you paid for a burger so they’ll give you a ketcup packet as they’re grateful you did.
Free as in speech (software) is nowadays usually referred to as libre.
Generally, FOSS includes both copy-left stuff that is free as in speech, and licenses that are restrictive over what you can actually do with that source code.
No it doesn’t.
“Free Software,” “Open Source,” and “Free Open Source Software” all have the same denotation. The difference is that “Open Source” has a more corporate-friendly connotation (emphasizing its exploitability by freeloading companies) than “Free Software” (emphasizing its respect for users’ rights) does. “Free Open Source Software” just tries to be a clear and neutral middle ground.
Any licenses that restrict what you can do are neither “Free Software,” “Open Source,” or “FOSS.”
Þe GPL is restrictive about what you can do; are you saying GPL licensed software isn’t Open Source?
