daradib/ projects/ free software/ introfs

Free software intro

  1. what
  2. pragmatics
  3. history
  4. terminology (open source)
  5. etc

what

Free software respects freedom by empowering users to run, study, modify, adapt, improve, copy, distribute, and redistribute software. For both ethical and practical reasons, developers of free software give access to the software source code that determines how a program functions and release the software under liberal licenses that impose few restrictions. Free software directly contrasts with proprietary software, whose publishers focus on maximizing profits by using copyright and contracts as tools to impose restrictions.

pragmatics

Free software is not just an ideal; it's no different than the pragmatic nature of American democracy and freedom. The free software programmer benefits because software can be based off the work of others and written as a community; the free software user benefits because freely available software in the public interest is written. Free software has therefore become an economic and social phenomenon, harnessing the power of cooperation and collaboration to succeed where proprietary software development has failed. The software is often more secure, more reliable, and more efficient because it has the potential to combine the power of various commercial and noncommercial interests. Like democracies and the free market, the decentralization of the field is the key to success.

Excluding support and the negligible price of a medium to provide the software on, free software costs nothing. By using free software, money can be spent on better hardware and on improving education, not on licensing costs to a software publisher. And as a result of its better performance efficiency, Free software often runs fine on hardware that would otherwise be disposed of – better for both economic and environmental reasons. Thanks to few licensing restrictions, less time and money have to be spent on verifying that every user and computer in an organization comply with confusing End User License Agreements written in legal jargon.

history

The free software movement was conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman, with four essential freedoms that must all be present for a piece of software to be considered free.

  1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
  2. The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
  3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
  4. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

terminology (open source)

While both free software and open source refer to the same kind of software, the free software movement focuses on the freedoms given to users and the open source development model concentrates on its technical and pragmatic advantages. FLOSS and FOSS are equivalent terms used to refer to both ideas without preference.

etc

For more information, see the philosophy of the GNU Project and the FLOSS Concept Booklet. If you prefer to watch a video, see the introduction to free software by comedian Stephen Fry.

Or, read my related rants.