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Freed software

In English we have a well-known confusion with the word/term “free”.  It can refer either to something having no cost/price, or as a reference to essential matters of liberty.

Words such as “freedom” might work, but are a bit much to say each team, and to me have the effect of hyperbole — big words chosen to prove how important the topic is.  Overblown.

Not that I consider matters of freedom to be trivial, but I don’t want to be using alarming language in every discussion unless it’s necessary.

Recently I found myself beginning to use a slightly new term that I think resolves the English ambiguities:  freed software.

What I like is the not unsubtle reference to any situation where a person, place, or thing was once owned as chattal and is now freed of ownership.  Being freed means having the freedoms of one who is free.  My writer/culture ear thinks that “freed” is the word that takes us out of the tautology of “free-as-in-freedom”.

xkcd.com comic about honor societies serving as a tautology.