Let's start using the term Libre in English

Over time, I've been increasingly convinced that all software should be free software.  Free as in freedom, not (necessarily) free as in price.

Anyway, what's annoying to me is that when I try to find "free software" for a particular purpose, I'm often thwarted by results showing up for stuff that's available gratis, and is thus labeled "free", but isn't free as in liberty.  It isn't free as in freedom.  It isn't free as in... libre.  Now, the spell checker I'm using just complained, because "libre" isn't a word it recognizes.  Wiktionary recognizes libre, and I've just told my spell checker to add it to its own dictionary, too.  And I intend to just start using it more and more.  Libre software, rather than free software.  Because libre isn't ambiguous in that context.  The word "free", on the other hand, is ambiguous; I'm not the first to make this distinction.

So in all future software that I release to the world under what's hitherto been called a "free software" license, I intend to call it libre software, first and foremost.  Maybe I'll also mention free, to increase the likelihood that people searching for "free software" will find it, but I'll refer to it primarily as being libre.  And I hereby encourage others to do so, too.

The GPL, for example, I'll call a libre software license... etc.  Heck, I'd almost encourage the FSF to rename themselves the LSF... though I suppose lsf.org is taken.  Alas.  (I'm not linking because what's actually there isn't relevant to the discussion.  And it appears certainly not to be gratis, and probably not something I'd consider to be libre, so....  I digress.)

I'm thinking about this primarily within the context of software, of course.  That said, I think this change is probably also useful in other arenas.  In general, I think we should just use the word libre more in English.  And gratis, too, for that matter.  In German, there's frei and gratis, and the meanings of these two words are quite distinct.  I want that for English.  Libre sounds awkward to me right now, because it's not used much, and so... I intend to start using it more, and hope others will, as well, and talk about libre recipes and gratis food.

Let's knock that "obsolete" label out of the Oxford English Dictionary entry for libre, and start using it more and more.

Also, I might opt for pronouncing it closer to /ˈliːbɹeɪ/ (LEE-bray) instead of /ˈliːbɹə/ (LEE-bruh), so as to avoid the homophone with the zodiac sign... not that I use that word (or concept) often.  Because, again, the goal is to not be ambiguous.

(While we're at it, maybe we should find words to disambiguate other same-word concepts in English?  Like how "hot" can mean either spicy or high-temperature?  German has scharf and heiß, respectively.  Why doesn't English have unambiguous words for these concepts?  Not to mention the various types of love.)

I'll leave you with this, sans [another "free" disambiguation!] "free":

I want to be libre to express what I mean with words that people will understand.  Take this for what it's worth, though, because of course this opinion comes to you gratis.