So I’m alive. I felt a little bit better for a couple days, but now I’m back to feeling awful again. My throat hurts like crazy and it’s preventing me from sleeping and eating. Tomorrow I’m going to try to go see a doctor. All things considered, I guess I should be happy I got really sick in Sweden, and not like, Croatia.
There was a decent article in the New York Times a couple days ago about Ubuntu.
It’s always nice to see Linux getting attention in the mainstream press, although as usual, the author doesn’t really seem to grock free software. The article is in the business section, and the author seems to have a lot of trouble with the idea that software can be something other than a product, that software development can be something other than a business. So we get quotes like the following:
“CANONICAL’S model makes turning a profit difficult.”
“All told, Canonical’s annual revenue is creeping toward $30 million, Mr. Shuttleworth said.
That figure won’t worry Microsoft.”
“Canonical’s business model seems more like charity than the next great business story.”
Also, the NYT writer completely fails to draw attention to the distinction between “free as in beer” and “free as in freedom”. I realize that the average user probably only cares about the former, but it’s the latter that really makes free software a socially significant phenomenon. It’s the difference between software that obeys its user (you) and software that obeys some company that wrote it.
So, I was thinking about the whole “free as in beer” versus “free as in freedom” thing. Here in Denmark, and in Norway, the two concepts are expressed by entirely different words: “gratis” as in beer; “fri” as in freedom. (I expect it is the same in Sweden, but with more diereses – Swedish, as far as I can tell, is like Norwegian with a bad case of syphilis.) France also makes the distinction (“bière gratuit”; “amour libre”); German, as far as I can tell, does not (“frei Bier”; “Arbeit macht frei”… I could choose better examples, couldn’t I?). Incidentally, when I typed “free beer” into google translate, the translation came out as “Bier”; the only logical conclusion is that all beer in Germany is free, rendering the adjective unnecessary. See you in Munich, and the first round’s on me.
Ask an average Brit the meaning of free software, and he will say that it’s software you don’t have to pay for. Either that or he’ll fart, call you a geek, and turn back to the football. My ever-helpful team of Nordic nerd buddies, however, inform me that the Norwegian translation is “fri programvare” – in other words, “free as in freedom”, and entirely free (if you’ll pardon the expression) of cost connotations. Could it be we Brits and Americans are inclined to confuse liberty with getting something for nothing? And, if so, which came first – the attitude or the semantics?