I'm not sure what Pasty was thinking, but...

Free as in Beer is a common phrase in the GNU/Linux community. Due to a slight shortcoming in the English language, the word "free" has several different meanings. To compensate for this, the community has adopted saying free as in beer and free as in speech.

The difference should be obvious. Free as in beer means that something has no monetary cost. Thus, if I'm at the groccery store and I try their new pigs in a blanket, that's free. I didn't have to pay anything for it.

Free as in speech, though, is very different.

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