Photos of the day 2011 software update

 

FRE SOFTWARE IMAGES

free software (video)

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer-facing hardware allow user modifications to their hardware. Free software is generally available without charge, but can have a fee, such as in the form of charging for CDs or other distribution media.

History

In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the software freedoms associated with free software. 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. By the late 1960s, 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 anticompetitive. While some software might always be free, there would be a growing amount of software that was for sale only. 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 and modify software. In 1980 copyright law was extended to computer programs.

Definition

The first formal definition of free software was published by FSF in February 1986. 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. (The numbering begins with zero since many computer systems use zero-based numbering.)

Examples of free software

The Free Software Directory maintains a large database of free software packages. Some of the best-known examples include the Linux Kernel, the BSD and GNU/Linux operating systems, the GNU Compiler CollectionC 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. It should be noted that not everyone agrees that all these are purely free software. Some view GPL software as non free and others view freedom on a scale with GPL being less free than copy-free (permissive) licenses and as such nothing is either "free" or "non-free". and

Free software licenses

All free software licenses must grant users all the freedoms discussed above.

• the GNU General Public License
• the GNU Lesser General Public License
• the BSD License
• the Mozilla Public License
• the MIT License
• the Apache License

Different types of licenses

There are different categories of free software.

• Public domain software – the copyright has expired, the work was not copyrighted, or the author has released the software onto the public domain (in countries where this is possible).
• Permissive licenses, also called BSD-style because they are applied to much of the software distributed with the BSD operating systems. These licenses are also known as copyfree as they have no restrictions on distribution.
• 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. 

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 which lack fixes for known security flaws, at least until a fix is available.

Free software advocates say that this method is biased by counting more vulnerabilities for the free software, since its source code is accessible and its community is more forthcoming about what problems exist, (This is called "Security Through Public Disclosure" by some) and proprietary software can have undisclosed flaws discoverable by or known to malicious users. 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. 

Selling free software

Selling Software under the BSD license is permissible and commercial use of the project is part of the intent of the license.

The Free Software Foundation encourages selling free software. Quote "Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!". For example the GNU GPL which is the Free Software Foundation's license states that "[the user] may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."

Commercial viability 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. 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 can increase commercial innovation amidst the void of patent cross licensing lawsuits. (See mpeg2 patent holders.)

Under the free software business model, free software vendors may charge a fee for distribution and offer pay support and software customization services. Proprietary software uses a different business model, where a customer of the proprietary software pays a fee for a license to use the software. 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.

BitKeeper

Larry McVoy invited high-profile free software projects to use his proprietary distributed version control system, BitKeeper, free of charge, in order to attract paying users. In 2002, Linux coordinator Linus Torvalds decided to use BitKeeper to develop the Linux kernel, a free software project, claiming no free software alternative met his needs. This controversial decision drew criticism from several sources, including the Free Software Foundation's founder Richard Stallman.

Patent deals

In November 2006, the Microsoft and Novell software corporations announced a controversial partnership involving, among other things, patent protection for some customers of Novell under certain conditions. FSF included as a result of this deal conditions in the GPL to prevent deals like it in the future.