Well, that depends on your definition of free.
In Stack Exchange 1.0 you could pay them a monthly fee to setup your own Stack Exchange site, on your own domain, and you were free to use it for whatever you liked.
In Stack Exchange 2.0 you no longer have to pay them a monthly fee (hurrah!) but you can’t use it for whatever you like (doh!). SE 2.0 will follow the StackOverflow.com, ServerFault.com and SuperUser.com path of being owned, maintained and monetized by the Stack Overflow crew. Oh sure, all of the content is licensed under Creative Commons, but the actual platform will no longer be licensed to or administered by third parties.
So, what’s free about this? Well, the content is free I suppose — in that, it’s licensed under Creative Commons, and the Stack Overflow team will not claim ownership of it. And you’re free to suggest new Stack Exchange sites, but you’ll need to go through a rigorous and drawn out vetting process — at the end of which, even if you’re successful, you won’t own anything.
So in short: Stack Exchange 2.0 is not free. Sure, you have the freedom to participate in sites that use the platform, and you have the freedom to suggest new ideas for sites, but you do not have the freedom to create your own site and determine its direction, like you did in Stack Exchange 1.0.