In discussing software, I tend to have a few different types of ‘free’ I talk about. These have been very useful in talking about different products/projects and I hope the meme spreads, and becomes a standard part of geek terminology and lore.

Free as in Beer

The code/project/product costs no money.

Free as in speech

The code/project/product is available to use, modify, etc under some kind of Open Source license.

I use these terms pretty often in general discussion, and they have been a great shorthand to talk about how or what a project is, and to clarify the term ‘free software’ a bit more in a given context.

Free as in Kittens

The project looks nice, but is hard to use, or not really extensible, despite being the code/project/product is available to use, modify, etc under some kind of Open Source license.

Free as in dirt

The project looks nice, but needs a lot of things on top of it (growing from it) to make it useful. Or it’s a core technology from some company, without any of the user interface, or user facing tools And the code/project/product is available to use, modify, etc under some kind of Open Source license.