Free

Some things are free and some things are free. That is not exactly a redundant statement because there are two complementary meanings of “free.”

Both meanings of free are relevant to gardening and computing. Free as in “free of cost” is one meaning; the other is free as in liberty. Open pollinated heirloom seeds are free as in liberty; there is no ownership of the genetics. You can grow these seeds and save your seed from year to year. Try that with “licensed” seed from a big ag company and you may be paying legal bills forever. Open source software is also “liberated” because you can use and modify it to meet your needs. Try that with software from Some Big Company and you will, potentially, have big legal bills.

We hear, frequently, “There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.” That may be true about lunch but high-quality software can be, and often is, free as in “free lunch.” Most open source software is free of cost, and because it is open source, it is, by definition, free in the liberated sense – often referred to as “free as in speech.”

There are still a few seed companies that have not been gobbled up by big ag and these companies still sell open pollinated seed. Free as in “free lunch” seeds are available from some seed savers; trading of seed is encouraged.

These ideas and some links will be in a future post.