"Gratis" isn't new in English; unfortunately it's just fallen out of use.
The problem is that even if we were to re-adopt a word like "gratis", it would take decades, at best, before using "free" to mean the same thing would fall out of the collective consciousness. So even if people agreed to start using "gratis" to mean "without monetary cost", you'd still end up with plenty of people getting the wrong impression from a term like "free software".
The best way to fix it is to have a new word for free-as-in-speech. If we could adopt "libre", and start calling it "libre software", it would probably require less explanation. Or, rather, it might still sometimes require explanation (because some people just won't know what "libre" means at all), but it won't cause people to immediately assume the wrong thing, at least.
(I also enjoyed another poster's suggestion to call it "freedom software", and thus immediately gain the support of a certain half of the US population that tends to shut off their brains when they hear the word "freedom".)
The problem is that even if we were to re-adopt a word like "gratis", it would take decades, at best, before using "free" to mean the same thing would fall out of the collective consciousness. So even if people agreed to start using "gratis" to mean "without monetary cost", you'd still end up with plenty of people getting the wrong impression from a term like "free software".
The best way to fix it is to have a new word for free-as-in-speech. If we could adopt "libre", and start calling it "libre software", it would probably require less explanation. Or, rather, it might still sometimes require explanation (because some people just won't know what "libre" means at all), but it won't cause people to immediately assume the wrong thing, at least.
(I also enjoyed another poster's suggestion to call it "freedom software", and thus immediately gain the support of a certain half of the US population that tends to shut off their brains when they hear the word "freedom".)