Free software

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past, 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.

Software that ensures these freedoms is termed free software.

While this is often called "access to source code" or "public availability", the Free Software Foundation recommends against thinking in those terms, 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.

From its founding until the mid-1990s, FSF's funds were mostly used to employ software developers to write free software for the GNU Project.

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past, 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.

In practice, this means rejecting "proprietary software", which imposes such restrictions, and promoting free software, with the ultimate goal of liberating everyone in cyberspace – that is, every computer user.

Free software is generally available at no cost and can result in permanently lower TCO costs compared to proprietary software.

Proprietary software, also known as closed-source software, is a non-free computer software for which the software's publisher or another person retains intellectual property rights—usually copyright of the source code, but sometimes patent rights.

Proprietary software uses restrictive software licences or EULAs and usually does not provide users with the source code.

A free software license grants users of that software the rights to use for any purpose, modify and redistribute creative works and software, both of which are forbidden by the defaults of copyright, and generally not granted with proprietary software.

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past, 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.

In 1975, hackerdom was scattered across several different families of operating systems and disparate networks; today it is largely a Unix and TCP/IP phenomenon, and is concentrated around various operating systems based on free software and open-source software development.

The loan adjective "libre" is often used to avoid the ambiguity of the word "free" in English language, and the ambiguity with the older usage of "free software" as public-domain software.

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" (a younger vision coined in 1998), because the goals and messaging are quite dissimilar.

The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as free software.

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.

A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free-software license with minimal requirements about how the software can be redistributed.

Users of these systems generally find the same set of software to be acceptable, but sometimes see copyleft as restrictive.

Copyleft software licenses are considered protective or reciprocal, as contrasted with permissive free-software licenses.

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past, 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.

The GNU Project was started by activist and programmer Richard Stallman with the goal of creating a complete free software replacement to the proprietary UNIX operating system.

See Gratis versus libre.

For example, they are used to distinguish freeware (software gratis) from free software (software libre).

Some of the best-known examples include the Linux kernel, the BSD and Linux operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent.

GCC has played an important role in the growth of free software, as both a tool and an example.

Users often may not reverse engineer, modify, or redistribute proprietary software.

The ReactOS project is even more ambitious in its goals, as it strives to provide binary (ABI and API) compatibility with the current Windows OSes of the NT branch, allowing software and drivers written for Windows to run on a clean-room reverse-engineered Free Software (GPL) counterpart.

Some of the best-known examples include the Linux kernel, the BSD and Linux operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent.

Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License, glibc is free software.

Some of the best-known examples include the Linux kernel, the BSD and Linux operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent.

Linux rapidly attracted developers and users who adopted it as the kernel for other free software projects, notably the GNU Operating System, which was created as a free, non-proprietary operating system, and based on UNIX as a by-product of the fallout of the Unix wars.

In contrast to what the Free Software Foundation calls free software, the author of freeware usually restricts the rights of the user to use, copy, distribute, modify, make derivative works, or reverse engineer the software.

The Free Software Directory maintains a large database of free-software packages.

It catalogs free software that runs under free operating systems—particularly GNU and Linux.

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.

TeX is a free software, which made it accessible to a wide range of users.

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past, 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.

The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project that Richard Stallman announced on September 27, 1983.

Beyond copyright law, contracts and lack of source code; there could be additional shenanigans keeping users from exercising freedom over a piece of software, such as software patents and digital rights management (more specifically, tivoization).

Much of this has been caused by free software or open source projects terminating when the owners of patents covering aspects of a project demanded license fees that the project could not pay, or was not willing to pay, or offered licenses with terms that the project was unwilling to accept, or could not accept, because it conflicted with the free software license in use.

Some of the best-known examples include the Linux kernel, the BSD and Linux operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent.

It has spread both as free software and proprietary software.

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.

LaTeX is free software and is distributed under the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL).

Some of the best-known examples include the Linux kernel, the BSD and Linux operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent. The BSD-based operating systems, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, do not have their own formal definitions of free software.

This led to Networking Release 1 (Net/1), which was made available to non-licensees of AT&T code and was freely redistributable under the terms of the BSD license.

The most notable are Debian Free Software Guidelines published in 1997, and the Open Source Definition, published in 1998.

Once the DFSG became the Open Source Definition, Richard Stallman saw the need to differentiate free software from open source and promoted the Free Software Definition.