Re: [Fsfe-uk] Liberated software

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 12:55:51PM +0100 or thereabouts, Sam Liddicott wrote:
> Sam Liddicott wrote:
> 
> >I've been scatching my head on the way to work this morning on this 
> >one.  Free is as precise as "love" is in english (same word masks the 
> >various meanings from altruistic to erotic).
> >FLOSS is possibily a word that would do. Libre was the best word I 
> >could come up with but it's hardly common usage.
> >
> >Its a shame, but free just doesn't communicate properly.

I remember a book about the English language which looked at
various pairs of words where we had one from Anglo-Saxon and
the other from Norman French. (_Not_ the old Ivanhoe example 
about animals and meat names. Perhaps by Simon/Simeon Potter?
It was a long time ago.. ) Anyway, it reckoned that often the 
Anglo-Saxon one was seen as more basic and fundamental, and 
the Norman French one as more of an abstract. Brotherhood and 
fraternity was one example. The other example I remember was 
freedom and liberty.

Liberate as a verb can have other connotations too...

> How about "liberated software"? Liberty is still recognized as an 
> important concept, and allows people to understand the main issues 
> surrounding free software.

"Some software was liberated from..." sounds like something the
ALF might put out. 

"Dedicated freedom-lovers broke into the server farm to liberate
cooped-up programs from an existence of solitude and misery, and the 
programs will be carefully released into appropriate parts of
the net where they may breed freely and produce new free software"

I'm not sure this is a helpful comparison, but I'm afraid it is
the first thing I thought of.

Telsa