Free as in "The people who make it should be doing it for free and I still can bitch about them and be the entitled customer as if they were Microsoft"...
I really don't like that sentiment though. Software development isn't for free just because you slap GPL on it. These devs need to be paid somehow if they are supposed to do more than 3h/week.
You can also see the same thing in the Linux kernel. Many Kernel devs are employed by Microsoft, Google, the NSA and many other commercial entities.
I mentioned this in the comment you answered to. But as I said, this might be an issue for people that use Linux because they really hate anything that isn't GPL, but 97% of the people on this planet care more about whether something is simple to use than what license it uses, as evidenced by the market share of Windows, Android, Chromebooks and Apple products.
Wouldn't it be better to get some of them to use Ubuntu with snaps than to stay on their proprietary platforms, because packet management sucks and conflicts are basically impossible to solve for someone who's not a software developer?
All in all, the / is just one style of abbreviation used in English. It's not only used for "with", but also a few other words (w/o = without, N/A = not applicable).
In German we abbreviate using a dot (e.g. "m." = "mit" = "with). That's not more or less intuitive, it's just what you are used to.
What's kinda special with English is that there are multiple abbreviation styles. Off the top of my head I can think of six styles:
Abbreviate random parts of words using a slash: "N/A", "w/", "w/o"
Abbreviate keeping only the first letter of a word using a dot: "e.g."
Abbreviate keeping the first and some random later consonants (and sometimes consonants that aren't in the word at all) without using punctuation: Dr, Mr, Ms, Mrs
Abbreviate using acronyms and no punctuation: BBC
Abbreviate using acronyms and dots: B.C.
Abbreviate by substituting parts of the word with a single letter: Xmas (Christmas), Xing (Crossing)
Tbh, I don't really get the hate that Ubuntu gets.
I mean, I do understand that people don't like some of the decisions made with Ubuntu (e.g. snap), but especially for people who don't use an OS for the sake of using that OS and just want to use their PC to get stuff done, Ubuntu/Kubuntu are quite good.
You have a mostly consistent UI that can do most important configs without touching CLI. Manuals and simple guides are easy to find, even in other languages than English (which is important for quite a big number of people outside the US).
And contrary to some other, smaller distros, Ubuntu isn't run by just 1-2 people and you can trust in it still existing in 10 years. (Obviously, this is true for many other distros, but some quite widly used distros are run just by a tiny team of hobbyists)
I mean, I'd get the reaction if someone claimed they are Linux users because they use Android (though with enough knowledge you can also get a full Linux distro running on Android in chroot).
You are totally right, but isn't it crazy that the worst currently running war has just gotten too boring for most people to care about?
Even worse, I feel that over here (Central Europe) the sentiment towards Ukranian refugees is already shifting from "We need to help these poor people" to "These Ukranian refugees are taking our flats, our school places and our benefits"... I guess, another year or two and we'll see far-right idiots setting fire to places where Ukranian refugees live. Same as we had in 2015 with Syrian refugees.
Beowulf was somewhere between 700 and 1000, so that's Old English.
Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616, so he used Early Modern English.
The King James Bible is from 1611 and it's counted as Early Modern English.
And the Epic of Gilgamesh was written between 2100-1200 BC in Mesopotamia which is on a different continent than England (today it's mostly Syria and Iraq).
Total agreement.
And even if you look at it from an egotistical view point: If the devs are unpaid hobbyists, you get unpaid hobbyist quality.