For a while now I've been avoiding using the term "free software."

Why? It's just plain confusing to people. I know Richard Stallman will tell you that it means freedom, not gratis. It doesn't matter. It's still ambiguous and needlessly conflates two different concepts.

Instead of "free software," I propose "freedom-respecting software" as a replacement. This phrasing is not only unambigous, it also does a much more effective job of communicating the general meaning of the term without further explanation. (Of course you'll probably still need to explain it, but you'll have to spend a lot less time doing so.) The one problem with this phrasing is that it's longer, but even that doesn't hold water - because of the aformentioned problems with "free software," people actually don't say "free software" all that much; instead, they say "free (as in freedom) software" which is unambiguous, but awkward on multiple levels. Not only is it a less eloquent way of describing the concept, but gramatically speaking it's really terrible as it puts a parenthetical qualifier in-between an adjective and a noun, which just sounds terrible and unnatural. Seriously, say both of them out loud. "Freedom-respecting software" and "free (as in freedom) software" - which one sounds like less of a mouthful?

Hence, I think "free software" as a term should be considered harmful, and replaced with "freedom-respecting software" instead.

Edit 0:58 10/10/16:

Another advantage of "freedom-respecting software" is that it's still closely related to the old term, allowing for a much easier pivot. Consider "libre software" which AFAICT had the same goals as this proposal but never really took off - in part, I think, because it sounds very different from an already-established term. (Another way of putting this is that it's conceptually an improvement to an existing term instead of being something brand-new, and therefore all existing associations will carry over with far more ease.)

I'd also point out that the problem of ambiguity is more serious than I've said above. First of all, generally speaking I'm suspicious of any proposal or argument that begins or ends with "we just need to educate people more." Education is an important part of the freedom-respecting software movement - remember, that movement is by and for the people - but I think that argument is too frequently simply an excuse for a poor initial design. (Security, I'm looking at you.) Second, such an ambiguity also muddles our search results. When people search for "free software" they do get our stuff (a fact that I was pleasantly surprised by!) but they also get loads and loads of pages for gratis Windows crapware. That's unideal and it is unlikely to change, ever. Even if people were able to readily grasp the distinction between freedom and gratis that we're pitching, we will never, ever have enough influence on the language people use to get them to stop using "free" to mean gratis - which means that Google will continue showing gratis crapware as "free software."

Finally, as pointed out by some excellent PRISM Break contributors, me writing this blog post and then talking about it occasionally is a far dumber idea than directly contacting the FSF, which I now intend to do Real Soon Now™.