[Fsf-friends] FLOSS concept booklet...

Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh vijaykumar@linuxmail.org
Wed May 19 21:38:19 IST 2004


I have answered a few questions. But I guess the questions need a little bit of reordering and rephrasing. I am posting this to the fsf-friends list so that the experts can correct me.

It would be better if this could be done on wiki. 

Vijay

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Intro / Concept:
What is free software?

Free software is software that gives the user the following four freedoms
Freedom 0: Freedom to run the program.
Freedom 1: Freedom to help yourself, by studying and modifying the
program to your needs. 
Freedom 2: Freedom to help your neighbour, by distributing copies of
the program. 
Freedom 3: Freedom to help build your community, by publishing a
modified version of the program. 

Well tell me what's not "free" about other kinds of
software?

So "free" means that I don't have to spend any money then?

With free software, it might not be possible to "sell" the software
itself. But when you get free software, you might be paying for the
distribution media. Or you might be paying for support bundled along
with the software. Or you might be paying for printed manuals that
come along with the software. So in some cases you might get the
software for zero dollars, in some cases you might be paying a small
amount, and in yet some cases you might be paying a lot!  

Whether the software is gratis or not is an unimportant side issue,
what is important is whether you have the above said
freedoms. Proprietary software could also be obtained gratis. For
example Microsoft is giving schools gratis copies of Windows, that
does not make Windows ethically legitimate.  

How is Free Software actually made?

You mean, how do people raise funds to develop free software? 

Many people who write free software are volunteers, they probably have
an unrelated day time job. These people spend their free time
developing free software.

Commercial organisations that benefit from free software distribution
or that provide free software support also develop free software by
investing portions of their profit. Example of such organsiations are
Redhat and Mandrake. 

There are many non-profit organisations that raise funds to develop
free software, through donations from free software users. The Free
Software Foundation is one such organisation. Other examples are SPI,
Gnome Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and the like. 

Some free software packages are developed by universities. The
Festival text to speech engine, Octave - the Matlab clone are examples
of software developed by universities.

Many commercial organisations also contribute to the development of
free software, because these organisations benefit from the existing
free software code base. For example IBM maintains the port of the
Linux kernel to the PowerPC, because it needs a OS for its processor. 

So how is this different from the production of other kinds of
software?

Well, freedom three has enabled a new development methodology, in
which a lot of people can collabrate through the internet and can help
make the software better. This has resulted in free software being
superior in quality to other non-free software. 

So the term Free Software is a legal definition then?



What do you mean by "Copyleft" ? What's wrong with copyright? How is
this different? 

One way to make your software free would be put the program in the
public domain. That way there would be no restrictions on the program
and the users of the software would have the above four freedoms. But
there is a problem with this approach. It enables uncooperative
people to take free software make modifications in it and release it
as non-free software. The new features might tempt some of the users
to give up their freedom. And the free software developers would be
forced to compete with improved versions of their own software!

This is not mere speculation, this has happened with the X Window
system and the BSD operating system, where less restrictive free
software licenses were used. Copyleft is a way of using the copyright
provisions to prevent people from parasitically using free software
code in non-free programs. Copyleft ensures that the freedoms are
passed along in every version of a free software program. The GNU
General Public License is a realisation of the copyleft.

What's wrong with copyright is a very different issue. You might want
to read Stallman's essay on "Misinterpreting Copyright - A series of
errors". But remember most of the free software programs are
copyrighted. 

Is this Copyleft against the law?

No.

What does GNU GPL stand for?

The GNU General Public License.

If this software is free as you say then why do we need legislation to
protect it?

What is this supposed to mean...

What other licenses exist to protect Free Software?

There are many license that make a software free. But only some of
them preserve the freedom aka copyleft. The non-copyleft license include
MIT, BSD, ... The copyleft licenses include the GPL, LGPL, ...

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