[carsonbaker]

Free soloing does mean no rope however, which is the important bit. You're speaking of rope-soloing, which can be done either free or aid. If you don't have rope with you, whether or not you bring protection only matters in the edge-case that you want to french-free various moves.

[sandworm]

I guess then we are at the fact that climbing terms mean different things to different climbers. Around my area, rope-soloing is solo top roping, basically a fixed rope with an ascender on the climber. I've got a great device for this that can grip two ropes in the same cam.

It's like how in my parts (west coast canada) we speak of top-roping when the brits would use the term "bottom-roping". We don't make a distinction between having the belay above or below. Free soloing here just means free climbing without a partner. We don't have a term for no-gear soloing, other than idiot. It doesn't come up much.