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by kdmccormick 1629 days ago
Agreed. As much as the free software movement wishes they could, you can't force the outside world to focus on one connotation (freedom) of word and not the other (free beer).

I quite like the term "libre software" for that reason.
1 comments
D13Fd 1629 days ago
I agree free software could use a better name, but Libre isn't it. It has two issues for native English speakers:

- It's not clear how to pronounce it. Lih-ber? Leeb-ray? Lih-breh? Libe-er? Leeb-ruh? Etc.

- It sounds like it originated in French or Spanish, which is not really accurate.

I honestly think this is something that has held LibreOffice back over the years. When you're trying to convince your superiors to adopt a massively disruptive software change, the last thing you want is for it to sound foreign (from whichever country you may be in) and be difficult to pronounce.

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pabs3 1629 days ago
Free Software is international and borderless and made by people with a huge variety of accents. LibreOffice for example has an incredible amount of translations, more than many projects. It would be better for folks to learn to embrace these aspects of Free Software rather than splintering it along nationalistic or linguistic lines.

There is of course some inevitable splintering between the English speaking part of the FLOSS world and individual bubbles of people who don't speak English. For eg it seems like there is a large space of open source projects by people who speak Chinese but not English.

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D13Fd 1628 days ago
That's fine. My point was that it would be better off with a different name in the English translation.
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pabs3 1627 days ago
Project names are generally never translated.
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rackjack 1629 days ago
I think "Libre" is fine.

- It looks like Liberty in text, which is the main context it will be used in. Just tell people it's a "cool" modification of the word "Liberty".

- It carries the connotations of personal freedom (liberty) instead of financial freedom (free).

- People are actually using it right now, so most laymen would be able to google it and get some notion of what it is.

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D13Fd 1628 days ago
It looks like Liberty, but its not pronounced that way. And "people can google it" is true of anything.
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