The free software movement is a social and political movement[1] with the goal of ensuring software users' four basic freedoms: the freedom to run their software, to study and change their software, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. The alternative terms "software libre", "open source", and "FOSS" are associated with the free software movement. Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker culture, Richard Stallman formally founded the movement in 1983 by launching the GNU Project.[2]
The free software philosophy at the core of the movement drew on the essence and incidental elements of what was called hacker culture by many computer users in the 1970s, among other sources.
Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the movement.
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The philosophy of the movement is that the use of computers should not lead to people being prevented from cooperating with each other. In practice, this means rejecting "proprietary software", which imposes such restrictions, and promoting free software,[3] with the ultimate goal of liberating everyone "in cyberspace"[4] – that is, every computer user. Stallman notes that this action will promote rather than hinder the progression of technology, since "it means that much wasteful duplication of system programming effort will be avoided. This effort can go instead into advancing the state of the art".[5]
Members of the free software movement believe that all users of software should have the freedoms listed in The Free Software Definition. Many of them hold that it is immoral to prohibit or prevent people from exercising these freedoms and that these freedoms are required to create a decent society where software users can help each other, and to have control over their computers.[6]
Some adherents to the free software movement do not believe that proprietary software is strictly immoral.[7] They argue freedom is valuable (both socially and pragmatically) as a property of software in its own right, separate from technical quality in a narrow sense.
The Free Software Foundation also believes all software needs free documentation, in particular because conscientious programmers should be able to update manuals to reflect modification that they made to the software), but deems the freedom to modify less important for other types of written works.[8] Within the free software movement, the Floss manuals foundation specialises on the goal of providing such documentation. Members of the free software movement advocate that works which serve a practical purpose should also be free.
The core work of the free software movement focused on software development. The free software movement also rejects proprietary software, refusing to install software that does not give them the freedoms of free software. According to Stallman, "The only thing in the software field that is worse than an unauthorised copy of a proprietary program, is an authorised copy of the proprietary program because this does the same harm to its whole community of users, and in addition, usually the developer, the perpetrator of this evil, profits from it."[9]
Some supporters of the free software movement take up public speaking, or host a stall at software-related conferences to raise awareness of software freedom. This is seen as important since people who receive free software, but who are not aware that it is free software, will later accept a non-free replacement or will add software which is not free software.[10]
A lot of lobbying work has been done against software patents and expansions of copyright law. Other lobbying focusses directly on use of free software by government agencies and government-funded projects.
The Venezuelan government implemented a free software law in January 2006. Decree No. 3,390 mandated all government agencies to migrate to free software over a two-year period.[11]
Congressmen Dr Edgar David Villanueva and Jacques Rodrich Ackerman have been instrumental in introducing in Republic of Peru bill 1609 on "Free Software in Public Administration".[12] The incident immediately invited the attention of Microsoft Inc, Peru, whose General Manager wrote a letter to Dr Edgar David Villanueva. Dr Villanueva's response received worldwide attention and is still seen as a classical piece of argumentation favouring use of Free Software in Governments.[13]
In the USA, there have been efforts to pass legislation at the state level encouraging use of free software by state government agencies.[14]
Like many social movements, the free software movement has ongoing internal conflict between personalities and between supporters of compromise versus strict adherence to values.
In 1998, some companies met to create a marketing campaign for free software which would focus on technology rather than ethics. After this Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI), to promote the term "open-source software" as an alternative term for free software. OSI did not agree with the free software movement's position that non-free software is a social problem or that it is unethical,[15] arguing instead that it is a superior model for software development.[16]
By 2005, Richard Glass considered the differences to be a "serious fracture" but "vitally important to those on both sides of the fracture" and "of little importance to anyone else studying the movement from a software engineering perspective" since they have had "little effect on the field".[17]
Some free software advocates use the term Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) as an inclusive compromise, drawing on both philosophies to bring both free software advocates and open source software advocates together to work on projects with more cohesion. Some users believe that a compromise term encompassing both aspects is ideal, to promote both the user's freedom with the software and also to promote the perceived superiority of an open source development model.
The two most prominent people attached to the movement, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, may be seen as representatives of the value based versus apolitical philosophies, as well as the Gnu versus Linux coding styles. Paradoxically as it seems, it is the symbiosis of their works that make up a complete operating system known as GNU/Linux, or just Linux.
Ohloh, a web service founded in 2004 and launched in 2006, monitors the development activity in the free software community, providing detailed metrics and quantitative analyses on the growth and popularity of projects and programming languages.
In January 2010, Global Graphics completed a survey [1] with 400 Chief Information Officers from organisations with over 1000 employees across the US and the UK that showed three quarters (76 per cent) of large organisations use free software across the enterprise with over half (51 per cent) planning to deploy more free software in 2010.
Some, such as Eric Raymond, criticise the speed at which the free software movement is progressing, suggesting that temporary compromises should be made for long-term gains. Raymond argues that this could raise awareness of the software and thus increase the free software movement's influence on relevant standards and legislation.[18]
Others, such as Richard Stallman, see the current level of compromise to be the bigger worry.[19][20]
Stallman said that this is where people get the misconception of "free": there is no wrong in programmers' requesting payment for a proposed project. Restricting and controlling the user's decisions on use is the actual violation of freedom. Stallman defends that in some cases, monetary incentive is not necessary for motivation since the pleasure in expressing creativity is a reward in itself (such as music and art).[5]
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