I'm saying that "free as in libre means free as in freedom like the word liberation, not anything to do with paying" is true in the same way a random piece of C++ code has nothing to do with CPUs, screens and keyboards. The code itself doesn't talk about hardware explicitly, but it's also not a poem - it's been made to be run on some hardware, and do things that are entirely about doing stuff to hardware. Same with Free Software - it talks about freedoms, but those freedoms are being exercised in the real, money-driven world, and they affect that world in specific ways.

> isn't it interest that people say "you're just arguing over semantics" when they actually mean "you're just arguing over syntax"?

I think I didn't make this mistake here. Or did I? Either way, it's just another unfortunate case of language drift, very similar to "literally" vs. "figuratively".