I got two complaints about the wording of the PG main page. In particular I refer to these two paragraphs: "All Project Gutenberg ebooks are free as in _free beer_ for anyone living in the United States: You may download all our ebooks for your personal use for free. "Most Project Gutenberg ebooks are also free as in _free speech_: You may copy them, give them away and use them in any way you like. See the license page for details." This wording, while a bit on the "slang" side, has proved very effective and I got much less questions of the kind "May I download Moby Dick and post it on my side which is about fishing?" than before. Also, I like it for `sentimental' reasons, because it is the slogan of the Free Software Movement. But this may be just a pet of mine. One person complained about the wording on the grounds that "There ain't no such thing as a free beer." (I don't think we have to consider this one.) A different complaint reached me a few days ago:
It is not an issue of understanding the meaning of the phrase, but rather the appropriateness of it. It is inappropriate to give the appearance of encouraging drinking, when many of the people using the web site are junior or senior high students.
I personally think this claim is bogus and I told the claimant so. But, as I'm living in a town that is proud for its cathedral and its beer (not necessarily in that order) I may be prejudiced. I therefore ask for opinions. More: If we decide to change the wording, we need a new one ("Free lunch" would anger the libertarian even more :-) ) that conveys the idea that PG is not just a free book download service. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org