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Free software
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public domain can also be free if the source code is in the public domain (or otherwise available
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without restrictions). Other legal and technical aspects such as software patents and DRM may
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impede users from exercising these rights, and thus prevent software from being free.[7] Free
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Free software is primarily a matter of liberty, not price: users, individually or collectively, are free to
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do whatever they want with it this includes the freedom to redistribute the software free of
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charge, or to sell it (or related services such as support or warranty) for profit.[8] Free software
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thus differs from proprietary software (such as Microsoft Windows), which to varying degrees
prevents users from studying, modifying and sharing the software. Free software is also distinct
from freeware, which is simply a category of proprietary software which does not require payment
for use. Proprietary software (including freeware) uses restrictive software licences or user
agreements and usually does not provide access to the source code. Users are thus prevented
from modifying the software, and this results in the user becoming dependent on software
companies to provide updates and support (vendor lock-in). Users can also not necessarily
reverse engineer, modify, or redistribute proprietary software.[9][10]
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The term "free software" was coined in 1985 by Richard Stallman when launching the GNU project
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- a collaborative effort to create a freedom-respecting operating system - and the Free Software
Foundation (FSF). The FSF's Free Software Definition[4] states that users of free software are
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Contents [hide]
1 History
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Catal
2 Naming
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3 Definition
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Deutsch
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Esperanto
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4 Examples
5 Licensing
6 Security and reliability
6.1 Binary blobs and other proprietary software
7 Business model
8 Economical aspects and adoption
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9 See also
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10 References
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11 Further reading
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12 External links
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History
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Bahasa Indonesia
Interlingua
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Italiano
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Latina
Latvieu
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customers able to better meet their own needs did not want
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costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the
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free, there would be a growing amount of software that was for sale only. In the 1970s and early
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1980s, the software industry began using technical measures (such as only distributing binary
copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to study and modify
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software. In 1980 copyright law was extended to computer programs. In 1983, Richard Stallman,
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longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced
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the GNU project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of
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the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in
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January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He
developed a free software definition and the concept of "copyleft", designed to ensure software
Simple English
freedom for all. Some non-software industries are beginning to use techniques similar to those
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used in free software development for their research and development process; scientists, for
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example, are looking towards more open development processes, and hardware such as
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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
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Srpskohrvatski /
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the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users.[13] Software
development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software
Trke
Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was
published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto. The manifesto included significant explanation
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The Linux kernel, started by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in
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1991. The first licence wasn't a free or open-source software licence. However, with version 0.12 in
February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License.[14] Much like
Unix, Torvalds' kernel attracted the attention of volunteer programmers. FreeBSD and NetBSD
(both derived from 386BSD) were released as free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was
settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache
HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, was released under the Apache License 1.0.
Naming
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Definition
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Main articles: The Free Software Definition, Debian Free Software Guidelines and Open
Source Definition
The first formal definition of free software was published by FSF in February 1986.[17] That
definition, written by Richard Stallman, is still maintained today and states that software is free
software if people who receive a copy of the software have the following four freedoms.[18] (The
numbering begins with zero since many computer systems use zero-based numbering.)
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what
you wish.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and
modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software
without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible.
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, the Free Software Foundation says: "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' ".[18] See Gratis versus libre.
In the late 1990s, other groups published their own definitions that describe an almost identical set
of software. The most notable are Debian Free Software Guidelines published in 1997,[19] and the
Open Source Definition, published in 1998.
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The BSD-based operating systems, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, do not have their
own formal definitions of free software. Users of these systems generally find the same set of
software to be acceptable, but sometimes see copyleft as restrictive. They generally advocate
permissive free software licenses, which allow others to use the software as they wish, without
being legally forced to provide the source code. Their view is that this permissive approach is more
free. The Kerberos, X11, and Apache software licenses are substantially similar in intent and
implementation.
Examples
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Licensing
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they find to comply with their own definitions of free software and open-source software
respectively:
List of FSF approved software licenses
List of OSI approved software licenses
The FSF list is not prescriptive: free licenses can exist that the FSF has not heard about, or
considered important enough to write about. So it's possible for a license to be free and not in the
FSF list. The OSI list only lists licenses that have been submitted, considered and approved. All
open-source licenses must meet the Open Source Definition in order to be officially recognized as
open source software. Free software on the other hand is a more informal classification that does
not rely on official recognition. Nevertheless, software licensed under licenses that do not meet the
Free Software Definition cannot rightly be considered free software.
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.[20]
It is rare that a license announced as being in-compliance
with the FSF guidelines does not also meet the Open
Source Definition, although the reverse is not necessarily
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Public domain software: the copyright has expired, the work was not copyrighted, or the author
has released the software onto the public domain (in countries where this is possible). Since
public-domain software lacks copyright protection, it may be freely incorporated into any work,
whether proprietary or free. The FSF recommends the CC0 public domain dedication for this
purpose.[21]
Permissive licenses, also called BSD-style because they are applied to much of the software
distributed with the BSD operating systems: these licenses are also known as copyfree as they
have no restrictions on distribution.[22] The author retains copyright solely to disclaim warranty
and require proper attribution of modified works, and permits redistribution and any
modification, even closed-source ones. In this sense, a permissive license provides an
incentive to create non-free software, by reducing the cost of developing restricted software.
Since this is incompatible with the spirit of software freedom, many people consider permissive
licenses to be less free than copyleft licenses.
Copyleft licenses, with the GNU General Public License being the most prominent: the author
retains copyright and permits redistribution under the restriction that all such redistribution is
licensed under the same license. Additions and modifications by others must also be licensed
under the same "copyleft" license whenever they are distributed with part of the original
licensed product. This is also known as a Viral license. Due to the restriction on distribution not
everyone considers this type of license to be free.[23][24]
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users of free programs. As users can analyse and trace the source code, many more people with
no commercial constraints can inspect the code and find bugs and loopholes than a corporation
would find practicable. According to Richard Stallman, user access to the source code makes
deploying free software with undesirable hidden spyware functionality far more difficult than for
proprietary software.[30] As examples, he named two aspects of Windows XP that reveal
information to Microsoft, which were discovered in spite of the estimated 50 million or more lines of
Windows code having not been available to individual users for personal auditing. Free or
opensource software is acquiring philanthropist funding and being adopted in the mainstream
media as a panacea.[citation needed]
Some quantitative studies have been done on the subject.[31][32][33][34]
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Business model
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Since free software may be freely redistributed, it is generally available at little or no fee. Free
software business models are usually based on adding value such as applications, support,
training, customization, integration, or certification. At the same time, some business models that
work with proprietary software are not compatible with free software, such as those that depend on
the user to pay for a license in order to lawfully use the software product.
Fees are usually charged for distribution on compact discs and bootable USB drives, or for
services of installing or maintaining the operation of free software. Development of large,
commercially used free software is often funded by a combination of user donations, corporate
contributions, and tax money. The SELinux project at the United States National Security Agency is
an example of a federally funded free software project.
In practice, for software to be distributed as free software, the source code, a human-readable
form of the program from which an executable form is produced, must be accessible to the
recipient along with a document granting the same rights to free software under which it was
published. Such a document is either a free software license or the release of the source code into
the public domain.
Selling software under any free software licence is permissible, as is commercial use. This is true
for permissive licences, such as the BSD licence,[37][38] or copyleft licences such as the GNU GPL.
The Free Software Foundation encourages selling free software. As the Foundation has written,
"Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!".[39] For
example the GNU GPL that is the Free Software Foundation's license states that "[the user] may
charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty
protection for a fee."[40]
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated in 2001 that "Open source is not available to commercial
companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make
the rest of your software open source."[41] This misunderstanding is based on a requirement of
copyleft licenses (like the GPL) that if one distributes modified versions of software, they must
release the source and use the same license. This requirement does not extend to other software
from the same developer. The claim of incompatibility between commercial companies and Free
Software is also a misunderstanding. There are several large companies, e.g. Red Hat and IBM,
which do substantial commercial business in the development of Free Software.
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Free software
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software for their Internet information and sales sites, due to the
house control. So if we
application packages.
software pays a fee for a license to use the software. This license
Free software is generally available at no cost and can result in permanently lower TCO costs
compared to proprietary software.[54] 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.
A report by Standish Group estimates that adoption of free software has caused a drop in revenue
to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year.[55] In spite of this, Eric S.
Raymond argues that the term free software is too ambiguous and intimidating for the business
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community. Raymond promotes the term open-source software as a friendlier alternative for the
business and corporate world.[56]
See also
[edit]
Digital rights
Free content
Software portal
References
[edit]
(gnu.org)
(gnu.org)
(fsf.org)
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5. ^ "GNU Press - Free Software Foundation Online Shop - Buy GNU t-shirts, books, stickers and
stuffed gnu toys"
7. ^ Sullivan, John (17 July 2008). "The Last Mile is Always the Hardest"
original
(gnu.org)
9. ^ Dixon, Rod (2004). Open Source Software Law . Artech House. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-58053-719-3.
Retrieved 2009-03-16.
10. ^ Graham, Lawrence D. (1999). Legal battles that shaped the computer industry
. Greenwood
12. ^ Fisher, Franklin M.; McKie, James W.; Mancke, Richard B. (1983). IBM and the U.S. Data
Processing Industry: An Economic History. Praeger. ISBN 0-03-063059-2.
13. ^ William 2002
14. ^ "Release notes for Linux kernel 0.12"
. Kernel.org.
Retrieved 2013-08-12.
17. ^ "GNU's Bulletin, Volume 1 Number 1, page 8"
18. ^ a
19. ^ Perens, Bruce. "Debian's "Social Contract" with the Free Software Community"
. debian-
. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
23. ^ "Why Not Use the GPL? Thoughts on Free and Open-Source Software"
. Retrieved 19 March
2015.
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25. ^ Mookhey, K.K. et al (2005). Linux: Security, Audit and Control Features
. ISACA. p. 128.
ISBN 9781893209787.
26. ^ Toxen, Bob (2003). Real World Linux Security: Intrusion Prevention, Detection, and Recovery
. PCWorld.
. News.com.
31. ^ David A. Wheeler: Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)?
Look at the Numbers!
2007
Wired.com 2004
33. ^ Barton P. Miller, David Koski, Cjin Pheow Lee, Vivekananda Maganty, Ravi Murthy, Ajitkumar
Natarajan, Jeff Steidl (October 1995). "Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of UNIX
Utilities and Services"
reliability of the basic utilities from GNU and Linux were noticeably better than those of the
commercial systems [sic]"
34. ^ Barton P. Miller, Gregory Cooksey, Fredrick Moore (20 July 2006). "An Empirical Study of the
Robustness of MacOS Applications Using Random Testing"
University of Wisconsin: Computer Sciences Department. pp. 1, 2. Archived from the original
on
21 June 2010. Retrieved 1 May 2013. "We are back again, this time testing... Apples Mac OS X.
[...] While the results were reasonable, we were disappointed to find that the reliability was no better
than that of the Linux/GNU tools tested in 1995. We were less sure what to expect when testing the
GUI- based applications; the results turned out worse than we expected."
35. ^ "Links to Other Free Software Sites - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation"
. Retrieved
19 March 2015.
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38. ^ "Why you should use a BSD style license for your Open Source Project"
. Retrieved 19 March
2015.
39. ^ Selling Free Software
gnu.org
gnu.org
41. ^ Ballmer calling open source a 'cancer', saying it's "not available to commercial companies"
at
the Wayback Machine (archived June 15, 2001) Chicago Sun-Times, 2001
42. ^ "Top500 - List Statistics - June 2013"
43. ^ "Roadrunner - BladeCenter QS22/LS21 Cluster, PowerXCell 8i 3.2 Ghz / Opteron DC 1.8 GHz,
Voltaire Infiniband"
45. ^ The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache Strategy in the New Economy"
46. ^ Gunter, Joel (May 10, 2013). "International Space Station to boldly go with Linux over Windows"
The Telegraph.
47. ^ Bridgewater, Adrian (May 13, 2013). "International Space Station adopts Debian Linux, drops
Windows & Red Hat into airlock"
. Computer Weekly.
on
1999-11-10.
49. ^ Hamid, Farrah (2006-05-24). "IBM invests in Brazil Linux Tech Center"
50. ^ "Interview: The Eclipse code donation"
. LWN.net.
on 2009-
12-18.
51. ^ "Sun begins releasing Java under the GPL"
Retrieved 2007-09-23.
52. ^ Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (November 20, 2006). "Study on the: Economic impact of open source
software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) sector in the EU"
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.[dead link]
54. ^ "Total cost of ownership of open source software: a report for the UK Cabinet Office supported by
OpenForum Europe"
55. ^ "Open Source"
56. ^ Eric S. Raymond. "Eric S. Raymond's initial call to start using the term open source software,
instead of free software"
Further reading
[edit]
Puckette, Miller. "Who Owns our Software?: A first-person case study." eContact (September
2009). Montral: CEC
Hancock, Terry. "The Jargon of Freedom: 60 Words and Phrases with Context". Free Software
Magazine. 2010-20-24
Stallman, Richard M. (2010) [2002]. Free Software Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard
M. Stallman, 2nd Edition . GNU Press. ISBN 978-0-9831592-0-9.
External links
[edit]
(gnu.org)
(fsf.org)
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