Libre software

Libre software is a less ambiguous term for free software. The European Commission coined the term in 2000 to avoid the confusing ambiguity of the English language adjective free (see gratis versus libre).

While the English adjective free can mean either no price or unfettered , libre is an unambiguous loanword from the Spanish language meaning "unfettered", or "possessing freedom". The adjective libre (which has the same meaning in the French language) compliments the word gratis , or gratuit in French (describing a commodity that is "free of charge").

To accommodate the distinction, the acronym FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) was expanded to yield the more descriptive term FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open-Source Software).

However, the term libre software is not completely unambiguous. In .