Free muddy beer!!

(Yep, that's what's holding back Linux and OSS in general.)

meh, i just think of free as in beer as being a example of a product provided at no cost. it could be free as anything physical but still not be gnu style free

but i suspect that the beer bit has some kind of geek joke background thats been lost over time...

ok. Still doesn't make any sense. I guess it is one of those things people say that isn't meant to make sense other than to people who know what it is meant to mean anyway. An in joke.

Indeed. Like a not funny one!

Not a joke, whether in, funny or otherwise.

Free could mean either of two things:
If I talk about "free beer", I mean I don't want to pay for it.
If I talk about "free speech", I mean I don't want restrictions on it.

From RMS's paper here:

Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.

As time went on, "free as in free speech" became habitually truncated to "free as in speech", and "free ... as in free beer" to "free as in beer", because everyone talking about it knew precisely the distinction being made, and it would be horrible to waste a monosyllable everytime you refer to one or the other. (I suppose, if you wished to find humor in this, that would be the place to find it; with our silly obsession for conciseness.)

Further truncations like "beer-free" and "speech-free" are occasionally heard, but that sounds too much like non-alcoholic and uncommented code to gain much currency.

But..the fact that in the English language, unlike many other languages, free can mean either 'gratis' or 'libre' is a source of confusion. And you can't say use free-as-in-beer-and-as-in-free-speech all the time.

free isn't even the worst doubly-defined word in the language.

cleave is its own antonym!
1. to adhere firmly intransitive verb
2. to separate into distinct parts transitive verb

So you mean we're lucky we don't use cleave software?

Count your blessings it's not cleavage software...

Thankfully, the "adhere firmly" meaning is archaic and rarely heard (perhaps in some wedding ceremonies). The "to separate" meaning is the common use of the word now, and it gets used all over the place, like in "cleaver" or "cleavage" ...

Both meanings of "free", however, are used all the time, and it is terribly confusing, even for native speakers. I think I'd rather say, "free-gratis," than say, "free as in beer."

I don't understand the question, linux is being held back? All of my servers run linux, most of my hardware devices such as routers run linux, my N800 runs linux, my desktop runs linux. I can find other OS's around here if I care to look. If you mean by some measure of percentage for Joe Sixpack International as a market then I don't know nor do I care. It is ironic that there is even a lawyer written declaration of legal terms and even stranger that the semantics of that document is debated by hillbilly lawyers and anyone with an opinion. Determining the market segment of an Open Source system is a little odd, counter intuitive, and possibly inaccurate (if I cared about the % of yada boo boo).

works for me. I don't see a problem.