this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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... such as?
Confusing "FOSS" with "free software" comes to mind.
Confusing "FOSS" with just "Open Source" seems like the more typical offender.
Count Me in the confused group, I thought FOSS was free as in speech software
Free as in speech (software) is nowadays usually referred to as libre.
English is a horrible language full of ambiguity. F/LOSS is libre, but not necessarily gratis.
Isnβt it usually the opposite, gratis (because if itβs open source, you could just build it yourself, unless thereβs a proprietary build env or hosted env) but not necessarily libre (because of the license?)
So wouldnβt gratis normally be the superset of libre.
Then thereβs a set of gratis but not open sourceβ¦ someone should do a venn diagram.
I could potentially just say it costs money to use this software, but allow you to build it yourself if you don't want to
It's called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) in case you were wondering
RHEL contains non-FOSS components, and so is not FOSS.
Okay, I'd have to think of a more pure example, but you get the idea. Downloads and support not free, but compile it yourself if you want
Oh, there's plenty of examples on mobile app stores. Since it costs to get your app on it, there's a natural barrier to entry for FOSS - so the people who do put it up sometimes charge for it despite the source being readily available.
What's gratis?
It means 'free of charge'. It's an English word, but pretty rare, I think. More common in other languages.
it's a latin loanword if you want to get all linguistical about it
Wait, but persona non gratis can't possibly mean a person who isn't free as in beer, can it? You can't have Me for free, I'll only sell My sex for money.
Not sure if you're joking or not, but it's persona non grata.
Ohhhh, right, thanks.
Actually, both "persona non grata" (latin has cases) and "gratis coffee/beer/bootloader" both make sense.
Just convert the "x is gratis" into "you're welcome to [relevant-action-verb] x".
As in, "The kernel is gratis" = "You're free to [use] the Kernel" (which is basically "it's free" in everyday english).
For "Persona non grata" it would be "(You're a) person not welcome (to [come] here)".
This is what it originally meant. It has nothing to do with price and everything to do with gratuity. I (a provider) am grateful to you and welcome you to use/come/see/do/whatever.
"Gratis" would be the ketchup packet at McDonalds - they're happy you paid for a burger so they'll give you a ketcup packet as they're grateful you did.
Persona non grata means person not welcome.
Gratis is free of charge, or you are welcome to take it.
I am probably just old, but I remember the days when "free as in speech, not free as in beer" was enough explanation.
But the F in FOSS stands for free. I understand that there's a lot more to unpack in the OS part of FOSS, but still, it's not quite wrong.
The F in FOSS stands for Libre
Wine is not an emulator.
Linux doesn't require programming knowledge to use, just computer knowledge at most.
I seen a few go opposite end and claim "you do not need computer knowledge, you can just ask chatgpt for the commands and copy-paste."
The two commands below are equivalent so why the fuck does every single guide online use former?
Because I understand the former
The latter can both summon nasal demons and not summon nasal demons. It is in a state superposition until an observer consults the manual
Not in apt manpage.
But in fact at man apt-get.
I blame the feds.
The second way doesn't work on older systems before they added it. I have some Debian servers where it doesn't work
how the fuck is my apartment going to get clean then
Ah wow a pedantic semantical objection, that's egregious as fuck that they thought it was something that is identical to a layman
"Linux requires constant fixing."
Use one of the stable distros. You generally never have to worry about breakage if you don't go looking for it.
Linux actually has a large swath of testers using rolling release who we've tricked into feeling very superior than the rest of us. /s
That one is particularly funny because they have to be completely unaware of the overwhelming number of 5-9 servers, super computers, and even the space station that use Linux explicitly for its stability.