Free software

Free software, libre software, or

libreware [1][2] is computer software distributed
under terms that allow users to run the software
for any purpose as well as to study, change, and
distribute it and any adapted versions.[3][4][5][6]
Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all
users are legally free to do what they want with
their copies of a free software (including
profiting from them) regardless of how much is
GNU Guix. An example of a GNU FSDG
paid to obtain the program.[7][2] Computer
complying free-software operating system running
programs are deemed "free" if they give end- some representative applications. Shown are the
users (not just the developer) ultimate control GNOME desktop environment, the GNU Emacs
over the software and, subsequently, over their text editor, the GIMP image editor, and the VLC
devices.[5][8] media player.

The right to study and modify a computer

program entails that the source code—the preferred format for making changes—be made
available to users of that program. While this is often called "access to source code" or "public
availability", the Free Software Foundation (FSF) recommends against thinking in those terms,
[9] because it might give the impression that users have an obligation (as opposed to a right) to

give non-users a copy of the program.

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past and other
permissive software like the Berkeley Software Distribution released in 1978 existed,[10] Richard
Stallman is credited with tying it to the sense under discussion and starting the free software
movement in 1983, when he launched the GNU Project: a collaborative effort to create a
freedom-respecting operating system, and to revive the spirit of cooperation once prevalent
among hackers during the early days of computing.[11][12]

Context
Free software differs from:

proprietary software, such as Microsoft Office, Windows, Adobe Photoshop, Facebook or

FaceTime. Users cannot study, change, and share their source code.
freeware or gratis[13] software, which is a category of proprietary software that does not
require payment for basic use.
For software under the purview of copyright to be free, it must carry a software license whereby
the author grants users the aforementioned rights. Software that is not covered by copyright
law, such as software in the public domain, is free as long as the source code is also in the public
domain, or otherwise available without restrictions.
Proprietary software uses restrictive software licences or EULAs and usually does not provide
users with the source code. Users are thus legally or technically prevented from changing the
software, and this results in reliance on the publisher to provide updates, help, and support.
(See also vendor lock-in and abandonware). Users often may not reverse engineer, modify, or
redistribute proprietary software.[14][15] Beyond copyright law, contracts and a lack of source
code, there can exist additional obstacles keeping users from exercising freedom over a piece of
software, such as software patents and digital rights management (more specifically,
tivoization).[16]

Free software can be a for-profit, commercial activity or not. Some free software is developed by
volunteer computer programmers while other is developed by corporations; or even by both.[17]
[7]

Naming and differences with open source

Although both definitions refer to almost equivalent corpora of programs, the Free Software
Foundation recommends using the term "free software" rather than "open-source software" (an
alternative, yet similar, concept coined in 1998), because the goals and messaging are quite
dissimilar. According to the Free Software Foundation, "Open source" and its associated
campaign mostly focus on the technicalities of the public development model and marketing
free software to businesses, while taking the ethical issue of user rights very lightly or even
antagonistically.[18] Stallman has also stated that considering the practical advantages of free
software is like considering the practical advantages of not being handcuffed, in that it is not
necessary for an individual to consider practical reasons in order to realize that being
handcuffed is undesirable in itself.[19]

The FSF also notes that "Open Source" has exactly one specific meaning in common English,
namely that "you can look at the source code." It states that while the term "Free Software" can
lead to two different interpretations, at least one of them is consistent with the intended
meaning unlike the term "Open Source".[a] The loan adjective "libre" is often used to avoid the
ambiguity of the word "free" in the English language, and the ambiguity with the older usage of
"free software" as public-domain software.[10] (See Gratis versus libre.)

Definition and the Four Essential Freedoms of Free

Software
The first formal definition of free software was published by FSF in February 1986.[20] 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.[21][22]
The numbering begins with zero, not only as a spoof on the common usage of zero-based
numbering in programming languages, but also because "Freedom 0" was not initially included
in the list, but later added first in the list as it was considered very important.

Freedom 0: The freedom to use 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 and
make 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' ".[21]
(See Gratis versus libre.)

In the late 1990s, other groups published their

Diagram of free and nonfree software, as defined
own definitions that describe an almost identical by the Free Software Foundation. Left: free
set of software. The most notable are Debian software, right: proprietary software, encircled:
Free Software Guidelines published in 1997,[23] gratis software
and The Open Source Definition, published in
1998.

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
There are thousands of free applications and many operating systems available on the Internet.
Users can easily download and install those applications via a package manager that comes
included with most Linux distributions.

The Free Software Directory maintains a large database of free-software packages. Some of the
best-known examples include Linux-libre, Linux-based operating systems, the GNU Compiler
Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the
Sendmail mail transport agent. Other influential examples include the Emacs text editor; the
GIMP raster drawing and image editor; the X Window System graphical-display system; the
LibreOffice office suite; and the TeX and LaTeX typesetting systems.

Free Software

Blender, a 3D computer graphics KDE Plasma desktop on Debian.

software.

OpenSSL's manual page. Creating a 3D car racing game

using the Blender Game Engine.

Replicant smartphone OS, an LibreOffice is a free multi-platform

Android-based system that is office suite.
100% free software.

History
From the 1950s up until the early 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the software
freedoms associated with free software, which was typically public-domain software.[10]
Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and by hardware
manufacturers who welcomed the fact that people were making software that made their
hardware useful. Organizations of users and suppliers, for example, SHARE, were formed to
facilitate exchange of software. As software was often written in an interpreted language such as
BASIC, the source code was distributed to use these programs. Software was also shared and
distributed as printed source code (Type-in program) in computer magazines (like Creative
Computing, SoftSide, Compute!, Byte, etc.) and books, like the bestseller BASIC Computer
Games.[24] By the early 1970s, the picture changed: software costs were dramatically increasing,
a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software
products (free in that the cost was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required
software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better
meet their own needs did not want the costs of "free" software bundled with hardware product
costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled
software was anti-competitive.[25] While some software might always be free, there would
henceforth be a growing amount of software produced primarily for sale. In the 1970s and early
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 or adapt the
software applications as they saw fit. In 1980, copyright law was extended to computer
programs.

In 1983, Richard Stallman, one of the original authors of the popular Emacs program and a
longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
announced the GNU Project, the purpose of which was to produce a completely non-proprietary
Unix-compatible operating system, saying that he had become frustrated with the shift in
climate surrounding the computer world and its users. In his initial declaration of the project
and its purpose, he specifically cited as a motivation his opposition to being asked to agree to
non-disclosure agreements and restrictive licenses which prohibited the free sharing of
potentially profitable in-development software, a prohibition directly contrary to the traditional
hacker ethic. Software development for the GNU operating system began in 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 freedom for all. Some non-
software industries are beginning to use techniques similar to those used in free software
development for their research and development process; 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.

1980s: Foundation of the GNU Project

In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU Project, saying that he had become frustrated with
the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users.[26] Software
development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software
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 of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and "copyleft" ideas.

1990s: Release of the Linux kernel

The Linux kernel, started by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in
1991. The first licence was a proprietary software licence. However, with version 0.12 in
February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License.[27] 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.

Licensing
All free-software licenses must grant users all the freedoms
discussed above. However, unless the applications' licenses
are compatible, combining programs by mixing source code
or directly linking binaries is problematic, because of license
technicalities. Programs indirectly connected together may
avoid this problem.

The majority of free software falls under a small set of

licenses. The most popular of these licenses are:[29][30]

The MIT License

The GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2)
Copyleft, a novel use of copyright
The Apache License law to ensure that works remain
The GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3) unrestricted, originates in the world
The BSD License of free software.[28]
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
The Mozilla Public License (MPL)
The Eclipse Public License
The Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative both publish lists of licenses that
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-software licenses can exist that the FSF has not heard
about, or considered important enough to write about. So it is 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 does
not 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.[31]

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 true (for example, the
NASA Open Source Agreement is an OSI-approved license, but non-free according to FSF).

There are different categories of free software.

Public-domain software: the copyright has expired, the work was not copyrighted (released
without copyright notice before 1988), or the author has released the software onto the
public domain with a waiver statement (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.[32]
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, and permits redistribution
and any modification, even closed-source ones.
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, protective, or reciprocal
license.
Proponents of permissive and copyleft licenses disagree on whether software freedom should be
viewed as a negative or positive liberty. Due to their restrictions on distribution, not everyone
considers copyleft licenses to be free.[33] Conversely, a permissive license may provide 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.[34]

Security and reliability

There is debate over the security of free software in comparison to proprietary software, with a
major issue being security through obscurity. A popular quantitative test in computer security is
to use relative counting of known unpatched security flaws. Generally, users of this method
advise avoiding products that lack fixes for known security flaws, at least until a fix is available.

Free software advocates strongly believe that this methodology is biased by counting more
vulnerabilities for the free software systems, since their source code is accessible and their
community is more forthcoming about what problems exist as a part of full disclosure,[38][39]
and proprietary software systems can have undisclosed
societal drawbacks, such as disenfranchising less fortunate
would-be 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.[40]

Some quantitative studies have been done on the subject.

[41][42][43][44]

Binary blobs and other proprietary software

In 2006, OpenBSD started the first campaign against the
use of binary blobs in kernels. Blobs are usually freely Although nearly all computer viruses
distributable device drivers for hardware from vendors only affect Microsoft Windows,[35][36]
[37] antivirus software such as ClamTk
that do not reveal driver source code to users or
(shown here) is still provided for Linux
developers. This restricts the users' freedom effectively to
and other Unix-based systems, so
modify the software and distribute modified versions. Also, that users can detect malware that
since the blobs are undocumented and may have bugs, they might infect Windows hosts.
pose a security risk to any operating system whose kernel
includes them. The proclaimed aim of the campaign
against blobs is to collect hardware documentation that allows developers to write free software
drivers for that hardware, ultimately enabling all free operating systems to become or remain
blob-free.

The issue of binary blobs in the Linux kernel and other device drivers motivated some
developers in Ireland to launch gNewSense, a Linux-based distribution with all the binary blobs
removed. The project received support from the Free Software Foundation and stimulated the
creation, headed by the Free Software Foundation Latin America, of the Linux-libre kernel.[45]
As of October 2012, Trisquel is the most popular FSF endorsed Linux distribution ranked by
Distrowatch (over 12 months).[46] While Debian is not endorsed by the FSF and does not use
Linux-libre, it is also a popular distribution available without kernel blobs by default since 2011.
[45]

The Linux community uses the term "blob" to refer to all nonfree firmware in a kernel whereas
OpenBSD uses the term to refer to device drivers. The FSF does not consider OpenBSD to be
blob free under the Linux community's definition of blob.[47]

Business model
Selling software under any free-software licence is permissible, as is commercial use. This is
true for licenses with or without copyleft.[17][48][49]
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 customization,
accompanying hardware, support, training, integration, or certification.[17] Exceptions exist
however, where the user is charged to obtain a copy of the free application itself.[50]

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,
crowdfunding, 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.

Proprietary software, on the other hand, tends to use a different business model, where a
customer of the proprietary application pays a fee for a license to legally access and use it. 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.[51]

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!".[7]
For example, the FSF's own recommended license (the GNU GPL) states that "[you] may charge
any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty
protection for a fee."[52]

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."[53] 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.[54] 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 (IBM acquired RedHat in 2019),[55] which do substantial
commercial business in the development of free software.

Economic aspects and adoption

Free software played a significant part in the development of the Internet, the World Wide Web
and the infrastructure of dot-com companies.[56][57] Free software allows users to cooperate in
enhancing and refining the programs they use; free software is a pure public good rather than a
private good. Companies that contribute to free software increase commercial innovation.[58]

The economic viability of free software has been recognized by large

"We migrated key corporations such as IBM, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.[61][62]
functions from [63][64][65] Many companies whose core business is not in the IT
Windows to Linux sector choose free software for their Internet information and sales
because we needed sites, due to the lower initial capital investment and ability to freely
an operating system
that was stable and customize the application packages. Most companies in the software
reliable – one that business include free software in their commercial products if the
would give us in- licenses allow that.[17]
house control. So if
we needed to patch, Free software is generally available at no cost and can result in
adjust, or adapt, we permanently lower TCO (total cost of ownership) compared to
could." proprietary software.[66] With free software, businesses can fit
software to their specific needs by changing the software themselves
Official statement of or by hiring programmers to modify it for them. Free software often
the United Space has no warranty, and more importantly, generally does not assign
Alliance, which legal liability to anyone. However, warranties are permitted between
manages the any two parties upon the condition of the software and its usage.
computer systems Such an agreement is made separately from the free software license.
for the International
A report by Standish Group estimates that adoption of free software
Space Station (ISS),
has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by
regarding their May
about $60 billion per year.[67] Eric S. Raymond argued that the term
2013 decision to
free software is too ambiguous and intimidating for the business
migrate ISS
community. Raymond promoted the term open-source software as a
computer systems
friendlier alternative for the business and corporate world.[68]
from Windows to
Linux[59][60]
See also
Definition of Free Cultural Works
Free and open-
Digital rights source software
portal
Free content
Libre knowledge
List of formerly proprietary software
List of free software project directories
List of free software for Web 2.0
Services
Open format
Open standard
Open-source hardware
Outline of free software
Category:Free software lists and
comparisons
Appropriate Technology
Sustainable Development

Notes
a. Access to source code is a necessary but insufficient condition, according to both the Free
Software and Open Source definitions.

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Further reading
Puckette, Miller. "Who Owns our Software?: A first-person case study." eContact
(September 2009). Montréal: CEC (http://cec.sonus.ca/econtact/11_3/puckette_ownership.h
tml)
Hancock, Terry. "The Jargon of Freedom: 60 Words and Phrases with Context". Free
Software Magazine. 2010-20-24 (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/jargon_free
dom_60_words_and_phrases_context) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20120606070
818/http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/jargon_freedom_60_words_and_phrases
_context) 2012-06-06 at the Wayback Machine
Stallman, Richard M. (2010) [2002]. Free Software Free Society: Selected Essays of
Richard M. Stallman, 2nd Edition (http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society-2/).
GNU Press. ISBN 978-0-9831592-0-9.

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Free_software&oldid=1228354100"