Free software

Free software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things. In practice, for software to be distributed as free software, the human readable form of the program (the "source code") must be made available to the recipient along with a notice granting the above permissions. Such a notice is a "free software licence", or, in theory, could be a notice saying that the source code is released into the public domain.

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The free software movement was conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman to make these freedoms available to every computer user. From the late 1990s onward, alternative terms for free software came into use. "Open source software" is the most common such alternative term. Others include "software libre", "free, libre and open-source software" ("FOSS", or, with "libre", "FLOSS"). The antonym of free software is "proprietary software" or non-free software.

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Free software is distinct from "freeware" which is proprietary software made available free of charge. Users usually cannot study, modify, or redistribute freeware.

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DangerGirl DangerGirl Linspire/LindowsOS Ask me about Free Software Ask me about Free Software (wirh like to the FSF).

Since free software may be freely redistributed, it generally is available at little or no cost. Free software business models are usually based on adding value such as support, training, customization, integration, or certification. At the same time, some business models which work with proprietary software are not compatible with free software, such as those that depend on a user having no choice but to pay for a licence in order to lawfully use a software product.

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History

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In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and then editor of the important hobbyist magazine Dr. Dobb's Journal, announced the GNU project, saying he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He introduced a free software definition and "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all.

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Free software is a huge international effort, producing software used by individuals, large organizations, and governmental administrations. Free software has a very high market penetration in server-side Internet applications such as the Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP scripting language. Completely free computing environments are available as large packages of basic system software such as the many Linux distributions and FreeBSD. Free software developers have also created free versions of almost all commonly used desktop applications such as web browsers, office productivity suites, and multimedia players. It is important to note, however, that in many categories, free software for individual workstation or home users has only a fraction of the market share of their proprietary competitors. Most free software is distributed online without charge, or off-line at the marginal cost of distribution, but this is not required, and people may sell copies for any price.

[Book] Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman Free Software Foundation

The economic viability of free software has been recognised by large corporations such as IBM, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. Many companies whose core business is not in the IT sector choose free software for their Internet information and sales sites, due to the lower initial capital investment and ability to freely customize the application packages. Also, some non-software industries are beginning to use techniques similar to those used in free software development for their research and development: scientists, for example, are looking towards more open development processes, and hardware such as microchips are beginning to be developed with specifications released under copyleft licenses (see the OpenCores project, for instance). Creative Commons and the free culture movement have also been largely influenced by the free software movement.

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Naming

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Definition

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Free Software Free Society, is a collection of essays by Richard Stallmann, Edited by Joshua Gay. The laptop runs on Ubuntu, a free Operating System, a flavor of GNU/Linux. In 2005, i could buy a Notebook model without Windows, nowadays it is even harder to get some reasonable model without Vista. 20080107

• Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study and modify the program.
• Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
• Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

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Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code is highly impractical.

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Thus, free software means that computer users have the freedom to cooperate with whom they choose, and to control the software they use. To summarize this into a remark distinguishing libre (freedom) software from gratis (zero price) software, Richard Stallman has long said: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'".

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In the late 90s, other groups published their own definitions which describe an almost identical set of software. The most notable are Debian Free Software Guidelines published in 1997,{{cite web|author=Bruce Perens|url=http://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/debian-announce-1997/msg00017.html|title=Debian's "Social Contract" with the Free Software Community|work=debian-announce mailing list|}} and the Open Source Definition, published in 1998.

[Book] Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing O'Reilly Media, Inc.

The BSD-based operating systems, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, do not have their own formal definitions of free software but users of these systems generally find the same set of software to be acceptable. However, rather than advocate the use of copyleft free software licenses, they see copyleft as being merely tolerable. Instead, they advocate permissive free software licenses which allow others to make software based on their source code and then not, in turn, also distribute the source. Their view is that this permissive approach is more free. The Kerberos, X.org, and Apache software licenses are substantially similar in intent and implementation. All of these software packages originated in academic institutions interested in the widest possible technology transfer (University of California, MIT, and UIUC).

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Examples of free software

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• Operating systems: GNU/Linux, BSD, Darwin, and OpenSolaris.
• GCC compilers, GDB debugger and the GNU C Library.
• Servers: Apache web server, BIND name server, Sendmail mail transport, and Samba file server.
• Relational database systems: MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• Programming languages: Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Lua, Ruby, and Tcl.
• GUI related: X Window System, GNOME, KDE, and Xfce desktop environments.
• OpenOffice.org office suite, Mozilla and Firefox web browsers, and the GIMP graphics editor.
• Typesetting and document preparation systems TeX and LaTeX.
• ogg: free software multimedia container, used to hold ogg vorbis sound and ogg theora video.
• Text editors like vi or emacs.

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Heated discussions on free software - Raj Kumar, Rajagopal, Sani George and Hong Feng

The Free Software Directory is a free software project that maintains a large database of free software packages.

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Free software licenses

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Most free software uses a small set of licenses. The most popular of these are:

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• the GNU General Public License
• the GNU Lesser General Public License
• the BSD License
• the Mozilla Public License
• the MIT License
• the Apache License

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Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative both publish lists of licenses that they find to comply with their definition of free software and open-source software respectively.

[Site] The Free Software Definition - Free Software Foundation
We maintain this free software definition to show ... `Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. ... But non-copylefted free software also exists. ...
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• List of FSF approved software licenses
• List of OSI approved software licenses

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These lists are necessarily incomplete, because a license need not be known by either organization in order to provide these freedoms.

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Why does Annie look so happy, you ask? Is it the slightly oversized pyjamas she's wearing? Or perhaps the 70's towel she's been put on? No, it's because she's just listened to her dad, explaining that this shot was produced using only free software of course! Since Windows crashed, and refused to reinstall on my machine, I've finally got started with a href= http://ubuntustudio.org/ Ubuntu Studio /a and now all I need to know is why I didn't make the switch a looong time ago. Everything quot;just works quot; so far. Or at least more so than in Windows. The shot was processed with a href= http://www.lightcrafts.com/linux/index.html LightZone /a , which seems to be a perfectly acceptable alternative to LightRoom, at least considering it's a lot cheaper (the Linux version is free so far). It also produces Adobe semi-compatible XMP-files, meaning my Ubuntu machine fits perfectly with Adobe workflow stuff on other machines as well. If you understood half of the last paragraph, I warmly recommend giving Ubuntu Studio a go the next time you feel like reinstalling your computer.

Apart from these two organizations, the Debian project is seen by some to provide useful advice on whether particular licenses comply with their Debian Free Software Guidelines. Debian doesn't publish a list of approved licenses, so its judgments have to be tracked by checking what software they have allowed into their software archives. That is summarized at the Debian web site.

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However, it is rare that a license is announced as being in-compliance by FSF or OSI and not the other (the Netscape Public License used for early versions of Mozilla being an exception), so exact definitions of the terms have not become hot issues.

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Permissive and copyleft licenses

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• Copyleft licenses, the GNU General Public License being the most prominent. The author retains copyright and permits redistribution and modification under terms to ensure that all modified versions remain free for as long as the author wishes.
• Permissive licenses, also called BSD-style because they are applied to much of the software distributed with the BSD operating systems. The author retains copyright solely to disclaim warranty and require proper attribution of modified works, but permits redistribution and modification in any work, even proprietary ones, again, for as long as the author wishes.
• Public domain software - the author has abandoned the copyright. Since public-domain software lacks copyright protection, it may be freely incorporated into any work, whether proprietary or free. Importantly, software released thus goes completely out of control of the author, who, even if he subsequently so desires, cannot impose any restriction on its use.

[Book] Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Security and reliability

[Site] GNU.org
Since 1983, developing the free Unix style operating system GNU, so that computer users can have the freedom to share and improve the software they use.
www.gnu.org

Free software advocates rebut that proprietary software do not have published flaws, but flaws could exist and are possibly already known to malicious users. The ability to view and modify the software provides many more people who can analyse the code, and possibly have a higher rate of finding bugs and flaws than an average corporation. Having access to the source code also makes creating spyware far more difficult.

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David A. Wheeler has published research concluding that free software is quantitatively more reliable than proprietary software.{{cite web|url=http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/high-assurance-floss.html|title=High Assurance (for Security or Safety) and Free-Libre / Open Source Software (FLOSS)... with Lots on Formal Methods|author=David A. Wheeler}}

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Adoption

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Under the free software business model, free software vendors may charge a fee for distribution and offer pay support and software customization services. Proprietary software uses a different business model, where a customer of the proprietary software pays a fee for a license to use the software. This license may grant the customer the ability to configure some or no parts of the software themselves. Often some level of support is included in the purchase of proprietary software, but additional support services (especially for enterprise applications) are usually available for an additional fee. Some proprietary software vendors will also customize software for a fee.

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Free software is generally available at little to no cost and can result in permanently lower costs compared to proprietary software. With free software, businesses can fit software to their specific needs by changing the software themselves or by hiring programmers to modify it for them. Free software often has no warranty, and more importantly, generally does not assign legal liability to anyone. However, warranties are permitted between any two parties upon the condition of the software and its usage. Such an agreement is made separately from the free software license.

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A common charge against free and open source software (FOSS) is that it lacks the ability to innovate. To that charge, the lifelong research of Eric von Hippel, professor and head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT ...

Controversies

Binary blobs

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The issue of binary blobs in the Linux kernel and other device drivers motivated some developers in Ireland to launch gNewSense, a Linux distribution with all the binary blobs removed. The project received support from the Free Software Foundation GNU/Linux distributions we know of which consist entirely of free software, and whose main distribution sites distribute only free software.

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BitKeeper

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Following the apparent reverse engineering of BitKeeper's protocols, McVoy withdrew permission for gratis use by free software projects, leading the Linux kernel community to develop a free software replacement in Git.

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Patent deals

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