My understanding of what he said was - to paraphrase and re-interpret a bit - "Free software is BS, because nothing is (as you put it) 'free economically'."
That's two meanings of the word 'free' in one proposition. The first refers to the rights of the users, and the second refers to putting in labor or cash to create something. The fact that the two might be closely related in practice doesn't matter. For this to work, you'd have to make the additional claim "Free-as-in-Speech is identical to Free-as-in-Beer", which would be insane. See: OpenBSD's cd sales.
Additionally, he's throwing in a third concept, which we could safely call "Free-as-in-Lunch".
What he seems to believe is "Free-as-in-Speech software is BS because nothing is Free-as-in-Lunch". Which I still disagree with, but I think would be a more direct way of expressing the point without using confusion about "free" to a rhetorical advantage.
That's two meanings of the word 'free' in one proposition. The first refers to the rights of the users, and the second refers to putting in labor or cash to create something. The fact that the two might be closely related in practice doesn't matter. For this to work, you'd have to make the additional claim "Free-as-in-Speech is identical to Free-as-in-Beer", which would be insane. See: OpenBSD's cd sales.
Additionally, he's throwing in a third concept, which we could safely call "Free-as-in-Lunch".
What he seems to believe is "Free-as-in-Speech software is BS because nothing is Free-as-in-Lunch". Which I still disagree with, but I think would be a more direct way of expressing the point without using confusion about "free" to a rhetorical advantage.