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Philosophy
Essays & articles
About free software
Principles
What is Free Software?
"Free software" means software that respects users' freedom and community Roughly it means that the
users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software
Thus;
"free software" is
matter of liberty; not price.
To understand the concept; you should think of
free
in "free speech;
not as in "free beer:
We sometimes call it "libre software,
borrowing the French or
Spanish word for "free" as in freedom; to show we do not mean the software is
You may have
money t0 get copies of
free program, O yOu may have obtained copies at no
charge_
But
regardless of how you got YOur copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change
the software
even t0
sell copies:
We
campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them_
With these freedoms, the users (both
individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them.
When users dont control the
program; we call it a "nonfree" Or
"proprietary" program.
The nonfree program controls the users
and the
developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power.
"Open source
something different: it has
very different philosophy based on different values_
practical
definition is different tOo, but nearly all open source programs are in fact free
We
explain the difference in Why
Source_
misses the point of Free Software:
gratis.
paid
"Open