> This is true in a technical sense. Restrictions on commercial use are incompatible with a very specific interpretation of what "free" means. I could also invent a definition of freedom that was contrived to be incompatible with copy-left licenses and then write a post about how those aren't "truly free" either.

Look, don't pretend that you don't know that the FSF doesn't exist, or that that is what is conventionally meant by Free Software.

Yes, English does have plain meanings for the word "free". However, you're not really doing yourself any favors here. You just sound like you're being willful or stubborn about the term Free Software. I agree that it's a poor term, but it's the term that has been selected. Complaining now in 2021 about computer terms devised in the mid 1980s is fruitless at best.

> From a developer's perspective: Why should code be 100% Certified Free™ instead of 95%, or even 50%? Is it a moral imperative to make code truly free, or an aesthetic ideal? What harms come from a CC-BY-NC license relative to MIT and why do those harms matter? I think answers to these questions are much harder and more interesting to come by than splitting hairs over the semantics of freedom.

Okay, so, if you look at the FSD link in the article [0], the very first thing is the four software freedoms:

> - The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

> - The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

> - The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).

> - The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The second thing in the FSD article explains why NC isn't Free:

> “Free software” does not mean “noncommercial”. On the contrary, a free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. This policy is of fundamental importance—without this, free software could not achieve its aims.

> We want to invite everyone to use the GNU system, including businesses and their workers. That requires allowing commercial use. We hope that free replacement programs will supplant comparable proprietary programs, but they can't do that if businesses are forbidden to use them. We want commercial products that contain software to include the GNU system, and that would constitute commercial distribution for a price. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important. Paid, professional support for free software fills an important need.

> Thus, to exclude commercial use, commercial development or commercial distribution would hobble the free software community and obstruct its path to success. We must conclude that a program licensed with such restrictions does not qualify as free software.

In other words, your open source, NC software will never achieve success because it's chosen to exclude one of the major causes for software success and distribution: commercial adoption. By extension, you've told all commercial systems to go build their own proprietary system and sell that instead. You've forced commercial systems to compete with your software. You've created a monster, because commercial enterprise is always going to have more resources than you do. You've ensured that if your software's purpose is necessary and important, your software will fail.

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html