Free (As In Speech) Beer, V2.0 266
AgentPaper writes "Three years ago we discussed an open source brewing project in which a Danish brewer made his beer recipes available for public consumption and alteration. The concept has taken off, first with the 'Free Beer Project' in Denmark and now with Flying Dog's 'Collaborator' Doppelbock in the US, which was created via input from home brewers across the world. One version of the Collaborator is commercially brewed and available for purchase (and is darned tasty), but you can download the same recipe and labels, brew it yourself, and submit your mods back to the project."
Not free for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Missed half the point! (Score:5, Informative)
When you brew beer commercially, it becomes very important to make same beer every time, and to make something which easy to consume.
The consumer beer is lighter (in colour and taste), because that's what you can drink in large quantities.
If you want beer full of flavour, the price goes up, or you have to make it yourself.
Re:Not free for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Water, hops, malt, yeast. That's all it is.
Re:Not free for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
There are many more (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not free for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Ever since the English got control of Scotland, it's illegal to distill whisky without a (extremely expensive) licence.
And what is Scotland most famous for?
Literally, if I pay a few thousand pounds, I can have a licence to make as much whisky as is humanly possible. About $10,000 I think.
Yet if I make 100ml of moonshine for my own consumption, I can go to jail for 10 years.
Re:Missed half the point! (Score:3, Informative)
Especially since the idea of FOSS comes from recipes.
My father and my grandparents also can various foodstuffs at home, and the quality is vastly superior to anything you can buy in a store.
But it takes quite a bit of time.
Re:Not free for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free (as in Beer) Beer (Score:2, Informative)
You have to promise to get rid of the link to that scary, scary picture in your
Re:Not free for everyone (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Missed half the point! (Score:3, Informative)
When you brew beer commercially, it becomes very important to make same beer every time, and to make something which easy to consume.
The consumer beer is lighter (in colour and taste), because that's what you can drink in large quantities.
If you want beer full of flavour, the price goes up, or you have to make it yourself.
It's sad that people still think of that ice-cold-piss-water served by the major brewers as "beer". I've always respected the home-brewers, and thought about getting into it a couple of times... but just haven't. I don't really need or have time for any hobbies like that. The idea of making a tasty dark beer is very appealing... but there are so many choices out there, and I still haven't tried them all.
Good beer isn't that expensive. 7 or 8 dollars if you want to try a 6-pack, cheaper if you get a 12-pack. That's $1.35 per beer. The way I figure it, that's like going to a bar and buying 2 beers, and I don't go out to bars that much anymore. I know a guy who drinks Miller Lite... he drinks a lot of it. I drink all kinds of "expensive" beers, but I don't pound down 6 of them a night. We're probably spending the same amount of money on beer, and while he may be getting drunker, I really enjoy mine. Could I save a few dollars by home brewing? Maybe.. but let's not forget all the "learning" batches, the time it takes, and the waiting! Oh, the waiting!
go-tos are Becks, St.Pauli Girl, Warsteiner, Newcastle, Grolsch, and a variety of dark beers. Youngs Oatmeal Stout and Chocolate Stout are hard to beat.
Free as in beer? (Score:5, Informative)
This sort of thing just shows how stupid the whole "free as in beer" v "free as in speech" thing is.
Beer is not free "as in beer". You have the pay for the stuff. It is, on the other hand, something that anyone can make and sell in a traditional manner without worrying about infringing any sort of patent or intellectual property belonging to the ancient people who invented it.
Speech is not free "as in speech". If I go and write a story about wizards called Harry and Dumbledore, I'll get sued. If I lie to your boss that you've been stealing from work and you get fired, I'll get sued.
We don't need such weird terms. "Free" in the first sense is simply an abbreviation of "free of charge", so just don't abbreviate it if you want to be clear. The Latin term "gratis" is also well-known in English.
If you absolutely insist on a term to specifically say the opposite, then "liber" is the perfect Latin counterpart to "gratis". There is also the derivative "liberal" which has several senses connected to freedom and generosity, and would be quite sufficient.
Re:Free as in beer? (Score:1, Informative)
The sayings "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" aren't implying that beer is somehow inherently gratis and speech is somehow inherently liber. The meaning of the saying is simply this: "free" as the word is understood to mean when used next to the word "beer", as in the phrase "free beer"; vs. "free" as the word is understood to mean when used next to the word "speech", as in the phrase "free speech".
Of course, the above is quite verbose, so over the years it has been shortened to the colloquial "free as in speech vs. free as in beer".
Re:Free as in beer? (Score:1, Informative)
"Free as in beer" means free as in the "free" you would mean if you said "free beer". Anyone offering free beer would mean the beer is gratis. No one is suggesting beer is always/usually gratis though.
The same thing goes for "free as in speech". No one is suggesting that all speech is free. They mean that type of free implied in the phrase "free speech".
The terms are unwieldy, but good luck trying to get people to use the Latin.