Neither beer nor speech were the topics of discussion. "Free as in speech rather than free as in beer" is an analogy commonly used to specify that you're talking about freedom rather than money.

Being the only Romance language that doesn't have separate words for "libre" and "gratis" (liberté and gratuit, etc), has its downsides

> only Romance language

...But we're (mostly) not one?

I mean, yes and no? In common speech we certainly lean more on Germanic vocabulary (and grammar!), but the dictionary overall has a lot more French/Latin-derived vocabulary than it does Germanic - many of them overly formal/technical for daily speech

(Entertainingly, modern German also adopted the Latin-rooted "gratis")

I could make an argument that "Complimentary" would be analogous to gratis in this context.