Gratis versus libre

The adjective free in English is commonly used in one of two meanings: "at no monetary cost" (gratis) or "with little or no restriction" (libre).

Gratis (/ˈɡrɑːtɪs/) in English is adopted from the various Romance and Germanic languages, ultimately descending from the plural ablative and dative form of the first-declension noun grātia in Latin.

Libre (/ˈliːbrə/) in English is adopted from the various Romance languages, ultimately descending from the Latin word līber; its origin is closely related to liberty.

Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

The re-use rights of libre OA are often specified by various specific Creative Commons licenses;[5] these almost all require attribution of authorship to the original authors.

[4][6] The original gratis/libre distinction concerns software (i.e., code), with which users can potentially do two[citation needed] kinds of things: 1. access and use it; and 2. modify and re-use it.

The target content of the open access movement, however, is not software but published, peer-reviewed research journal article texts.