@colinsmatt11 "freedom software" has been somewhat often used by proprietary software companies that do the classic bait and switch where they promise freedom with their proprietary software, but then proceed to do the exact opposite, so I don't use that term.

For people to understand free software, you have to drive the point home hard that free means freedom from [x] and has absolutely nothing to do with price, although marketing often adopts a ploy where they promise freedom by claiming that something's free of charge, when most of the time, the thing offered isn't even gratis and doesn't give freedom either.

But good luck getting a someone that's a slave to (not actual) convenience to understand or remember that.


I've taken to writing and saying free software with fellow freedom enjoys and also in contexts where lots of freedom and GNU can be seen and libre software in other contexts.

Libre is derived from liberty, so some variant of: "It's libre software, thus software that respects your liberty and freedom, also known as free software." should succulently describe it in only one sentence.

@lightweight >if you have to explain a marketing phrase, it's already failed.
"open source" if anything is utterly terrible as a marketing phrase, as it takes many sentences to explain that it refers to 10 requirements for the licenses of software.

Although you can market "open source" quite easily, every single person marketed to assumes that it means that the source code is publicly available and it's incredibly difficult to get the misinformed to understand otherwise.