fter the Microsoft jokes, after the speaker's disquisition on the moral imperative of free software, after the salad, steak and chocolate raspberry pie, the benefit dinner for the Free Software Foundation in Manhattan finally came down to business last Thursday.

It seems the foundation, whose purpose is to persuade people to donate their software code to the greater good, needs money. The paradox was not lost on some diners, who questioned what "free" actually meant in such contexts.

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"Shouldn't you change the name?" one diner asked Eben Moglen, a Columbia Law School professor and the foundation's lawyer. "It's so confusing."

Mr. Moglen said he did not think a name change was necessary. As Richard M. Stallman, the foundation's founder, likes to say: Free software is "free as in freedom, not as in beer."

Free software is software that anyone can tinker with, copy and redistribute at will. But theoretically, it can be sold for a lot of money. Robert Dewar, host of the benefit dinner at his Fifth Avenue apartment off Union Square, does just that with his company, Ada Core Technologies. He sells free software to aerospace companies that want to be able to modify it for their own use. The minimum charge, Mr. Dewar said, is $12,000.

Mr. Stallman's point, now supported by many thousands of programmers worldwide, is that software becomes better when more people can work on it. Recently, several companies, including I.B.M., Sun Microsystems and Red Hat, have started trying to make money on that premise by selling software and technical support for Linux, the main competitor to Microsoft's Windows.

It mignt be thought that such companies would be a natural source of financing for the Free Software Foundation. But not during the current technology recession. So the foundation relies on volunteers, who — as is the case with a lot of free software — mostly want to work on their own pet projects. "That's why our Web site is so bad," said Bradley M. Kuhn, the foundation's executive director, as dinner wrapped up.

The hat was passed. And the 25 or so guests, who ranged from a music school student to technology gurus from large financial and advertising companies, gave a total of $6,000 to the cause of free software.