What does "libre" refer to in the context of a software license?

In software licensing, "libre" refers to freedom, not price. Borrowed
from Romance languages, it is used to specifically distinguish software
that grants users total liberty over their code (free as in speech) from
software that is simply available at no monetary cost, or gratis (free
as in beer).

https://book.the-turing-way.org/reproducible-research/licensing/licensing-floss/

According to the Free Software Definition:

https://wikieducator.org/Libre

a "libre" software license must grant users four essential freedoms:

- Use: The freedom to run the software for any purpose.

- Study: The freedom to examine how the program works and alter it to
fit your needs (which requires accessible source code).

- Share: The freedom to redistribute copies to help others.

- Modify: The freedom to distribute modified versions and share your
improvements with the community.

Common examples of licenses that meet these "libre" criteria include the
GNU General Public License (GPL) and permissive open-source licenses
like the MIT and Apache licenses.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/open-source-license

Freeware, in the context of the main topic of this newsgroup, is
software that requires no cost, monetary or otherwise, to use. Such
software may or may not be "libre", because the four freedoms described
above have nothing to do with the cost (to the end user) of running a
program.

-- 
John C. No ad, CD, cripple, demo, nag, pay, pirated, share, spy,
time-limited, trial or web wares for me please. I filter crossposts,
various trolls & dizum.com. This makes ACF easier to read. Take back
tech corporations from India & industry back from China.