[rejschaap]

Probably the same world where speech and love are free. :)

Roughly:

Free as in beer means you don't have to pay money to use it.

Free as in speech means you have freedom to use or modify it in any way you want

Free as in love means it will happily plays with all other software and systems

[samstave]

I've been on the internet for decades, and that phrase never sat well with me; Beer Money is a real phrase, and AFAICR I've always been required to tender a fee for the right to undock a beer container from the beer-temperature-control-apparatus or purge beer fluid from a heat controlled storage vessel.

[estebank]

Have you never been invited over and been offered to fetch yourself some beer from the fridge? It'd be weird for a friend to require you to tender a fee before doing so, and they'd also be quite annoyed if you started stockpiling the beer being offered to you and started reselling it. In my mind the phrase conjures the right frame of mind: "Hey! Check out this piece of code I've written, friend! Feel free to use it!"

[samstave]

That is a perfect way to put it for me to understand it...

Thanks. I feel obtuse for not getting that for so long.

[startupdiscuss]

Ah, I could figure out the beer from the other two but I couldn't tell the speech-free apart from love-free.

They should also add "Free as in dom" meaning the word used as a political ploy to have people conform to your point of view