Talk:Gratis versus Libre

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[edit] "The phrase is derived from Spanish."

It's not a 'phrase', just a phrase. Nor do I believe that 'it derives from Spanish' or any other language. It's just a concept. --jazzle 10:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

"Is not the word liberty equivlent to libre" - unsigned
Yes. Liberty. Freedom. We have words in English. WAS 4.250 05:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Except that libre is used as an adjective. Kctucker 11:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Liber vs. libre

Should be gratis versus liber. Both in Latin. — Chameleon 23:34, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

"Gratis" and "libre" are the French terms. — Casey J. Morris 01:37, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
I've been unable to find "gratis" in any online French dictionaries. However, both words are Spanish. — FuzzyOnion 06:34, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, the French is "gratuit." —Casey J. Morris 18:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

There are many misnomers in English. Even words that mix elements from greek and latin. (horrors!) For better or worse "libre" is the term as currently used in English to be contrasted with "gratis" when discussing software. I am not aware of "liber" being in common use in English for any purpose whatever. 4.250.177.52 13:46, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Making "free as in beer" subheader of Gratis

I just made free as in beer a subheader of Gratis, as I found it quite confusing to have Gratis, Libre, and Free as in Beer as the headers in an article about Gratis vs Libre. Not only isn't Free as in Beer a separate philosophy, but it was also already described under Gratis. So I merged the relevant paragraphs as well. Hopefully all these edits ended up achieving the clarity I was hoping for. :-) -- Jugalator 10:59, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

In a discussion with my co-workers, I realized there's another "free": available. "Are you free for dinner?" "No, I have class tonight." - UtherSRG (talk) 18:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
free for dinner => having the liberty of time for dinner, as in liber / libre

[edit] Free as a Puppy

Where does "Free as a Puppy" fit into this?

-You get a puppy for free but you still have to spend money to keep it alive.

[edit] 1984

I know there was some mention of these different meanings of "free" in 1984. Are they worth being mentioned in this article?

I don't think so. This is the topic of many books besides Ninetee Eighty-Four. No particular reason to include exactly that one. A superb book, though. --logixoul 12:22, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
What's up with '84? I'm sure they're mentioned every year. :-) Vildricianus 20:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Free beer

Could you elaborate on "free beer"? Is it common to offer beer for free in some cultures? Where? -unsigned

Could you provide me with some examples? 195.194.167.31 13:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Oooh, yes, can I have some too?! 220.238.30.131 09:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Split these two articles?

Any objection to splitting this into two articles "gratis" and "libre"? That makes it possible to link to "libre" or "gratis" to gloss the word "free": "Wikipedia is the [[libre|free]] encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Right now, "libre" redirects to "Gratis versus Libre" so clicking the link wouldn't resolve the ambiguity. For easy maintenance it could be done as two new articles of a sentence or so each, both linking to this article which goes into more detail. Phr 00:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

We used to have two seperate articles but deletionists said "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" so I created this article to preserve the contents from the deletionists. If this article ever gets big enough, it could be broken into two, but splitting it now would only create articles people would want to delete because "Wikipedia is not a dictionary". WAS 4.250 15:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, the wiktionary entries wikt:gratis wikt:libre are pretty useless. Phr (talk) 05:02, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
I prefer the status quo, i.e. "Gratis vs Libre", to individual articles on gratis and libre. —Quarl (talk) 2006-08-23 05:47Z
Seems like contextually this is going to be more useful 90% of the time, for people first encountering either phrase. And as for the wiktionary entries, isn't that just (or at least mainly) supposed to be for English words? Tokataro 05:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Libre equivalent in English

Is not the word liberation the same? (or liberated, etc) just that there is no root word? SECProto 02:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Liberty, liberation, freedom. We have words in English. The choice of the word "free" was a mistake. That choice is currently justified by the mythology of a lack of adequate alternatives in English. WAS 4.250 05:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Er, but none of those "alternatives" are adjectives. Redquark 23:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Liberty Bell, Liberation theology, Freedom Trail, Freedom rides and so on set examples that could have been used instead of "free". WAS 4.250 09:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
The problem with liberty and freedom is those words have nationalistic connotations, at least in the USA. Words whose dictionary definitions mean Gratis and Libre may exist in common english, but they don't seem to have neutral connotations. Harperska 13:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
See "History of free" free = Libre (not gratis), befor modern englis

Is it not time English accepted "libre" in the same way as other Loanwords: "Although loanwords are typically far fewer than the native words of most languages ..., they are often widely known and used, since their borrowing served a certain purpose...". Using "libre" serves a purpose: it disambiguates "free" (gratis/libre) in discussions about FLOSS and free knowledge etc. The word "libre" is becoming widely understood by English speakers - especially those interested in free culture, libre knowledge, FLOSS, etc. - Kctucker 08:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Libre also = gratis in French? (According to Wiktionary)

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffr.wiktionary.org%2Fwiki%2Flibre&langpair=fr%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

ie. One valid synonym of "libre" is "gratuit" which means "gratis".

ie. It seems to have the exact same problem as the English word "free".

--irrevenant [ talk ] 03:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't. I speak French and I can tell you that the "gratis" meaning of "libre" is an uncommon usage that would only be used in certain limited contexts (and I can't even think of any at the moment). The connotation of liberty is much stronger. "logiciel libre" is not ambiguous. Redquark 23:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gratis becoming common?

I question the claim gratis is becoming more common in the English language. I've never heard it used other then in the context of the libre/gratis distinction. Perhaps gratis is used in the US given the Spanish influence but not so much elsewhere? Nil Einne 20:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of free

The concept of free as in free beer "grātia" is new to English language, before modern English that is. Free as in freedom "līber" is the original meaning. In comparative study to old Germanic languages one can easily see that the parse "without charge" is used when "grātia" is meant, that would be if translated like: beer available without charge.

[edit] Meaning of "gratis"

Gratis is the plural ablative form of the first declension noun "grātia" in Latin and used as an adjective in various Romance and Germanic languages meaning "for nothing" [...]

In modern languages it means "for nothing" but I believe that its original meaning in Latin is different: The word "grātia", from which the English "grace" is derived, may also mean "thanks" when used in plural (compare Spanish "gracias", Italian "grazie" and Catalonian "gràcies"). When the ablative form of this plural is used, it can mean "for the thanks", i. e. "for saying thank you", "in exchange of saying thank you". Which somehow makes sense because when you get something "gratis" you don't have to pay, so the only thing you have to do is just to say "thank you" (and getting something for free gives you a good reason to be thankful to the person giving it to you).

This is a nice thing to know but I don't know if it deserves a place in the article so I post it here.


On a completely unrelated topic, I would say that "gratis" is not used as an adjective proper, but as an adverb. Although it is very difficult to tell. One difference between adjectives and adverbs in languages like Spanish or German is that adjectives agree in number and gender (and in German, in case) with the noun they refer to. But "gratis" is an invariable word in the mentioned languages. Although Latin words incorporated into these languages are often invariable.

In German, you can say "das Bier ist gratis" ("the beer is free") but you it would be wrong to talk about "ein gratis Bier" ("a free beer"). In Spanish you may say "una cerveza gratis" although I doubt this usage, despite being widespread, is correct.

In both cases, the languages have words that are proper adjectives: German has "kostenlos" (literally: "costless") and Spanish has "gratuito" (compare French "gratuit"). Like all adjectives, these words adapt their endings to agree with the noun they refer to:


ein kostenloser Zug

eine kostenlose Reise

ein kostenloses Bier


un viaje gratuito

una cerveza gratuita


... etc.

Charly1982 10:12, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Costless and Unencumbered

The article starts, "Gratis is slowly becoming more common in the English language. However, libre has not, and no English adjective signifies freedom only."

The claim in the first sentence is uncited, and the second is factually incorrect, since one can differentiate these two meanings of free by using words like "costless" and "unencumbered". Is there any reason not to delete these two sentences? --Steve Foerster 17:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Should be able to cite fsf.org, I'll wager. --Kim Bruning 20:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too long article?

It feels like this article might be too stretched. The difference between gratis and libre are given three times. One should do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.251.129.62 (talk) 23:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Free as in beer?

I've seen the phrase "free as in beer" a few times, a recent mention made me decide to look it up; sure enough, WP found it (yay wp!) but redirects here, where there is currently not a single reference to the phrase except in the external links.
I get from the article what FAIB refers to (free as in price, as opposed to liberty), but since FIAB redirects here, there should be at least one reference somewhere in the destination article. -- PaulxSA (talk) 00:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Even the article-link that was put in place of the FAIB, Alternative terms for free software doesn't contain the removed info, nor any subsequent link. Either return the FAIB section, put it in Free as in beer without the redirect, or redirect it somewhere that has the deleted information. Just deleting an entire section without fixing the stuff pointing to it is really annoying. -- PaulxSA (talk) 01:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I cannot figure out how to maneuver around this website to edit an error on the front page of Wikipedia, so I hope that someone will see this post and take care of it.
When I say the front page, I'm talking about the page www.wikipedia.com. Under Español, it says "La enciclopedia libre". That is incorrect. It should be "La enciclopedia gratis". Libre signifies freedom, for example I am free from slavery. Gratis signifies no cost.

--Lamujer (talk) 15:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

What you say is true, except that, while Wikipedia is indeed gratis, it is also libre, and it is that aspect that the Wikimedia Foundation chooses to emphasize in the tagline. Powers T 13:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)