From: Tony Williams 

Ok, I'm not going to quibble on the exact meaning of the word. In the
context of software I take "free" to mean free in all senses: no
charge and no restrictions. GPL is free in the limited sense of "free
beer", but not in the sense of "free to do with what you
will".

Closed source commercial software isn't free in either sense of the word, of course.

--
Tony

Geo. wrote:
> "Tony Williams"  wrote in message
> news:3dfc2376{at}w3.nls.net...
>
>
>>Umm, "free with restrictions" is an oxymoron - a bit like
a Curate's egg.
>
>
> Free beer is free with restrictions (you have to be legal age) is it not?
>
>
>>Truly free software is released into the public domain and anyone can
>>use it however they want.
>
>
> That's not just free, that's unregulated. Very few things in this world are
> free and unregulated. Air is free but you can't go using it to vent an
> atomic reactor then return it to the atmosphere.
>
>
>>I'm not saying the GPL is a bad thing, but software released under it is
>>not free.
>
>
> It is free, it's just not unregulated.
>
> Geo.
>
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-4