Free Software

"Free Software is a set of principles designed to protect the freedom of individuals to use computer software. It emerged in the 1980s against a backdrop of increasing restrictions on the use and production of software. Free Software can therefore be understood historically and ethically as the defence of freedom against a genuine threat."

- Rob Myers [1]

Definition

The term free software is defined by the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/.

From the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software:

"Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. Freedom from such restrictions is central to the concept, with the opposite of free software being proprietary software (a distinction unrelated to whether a fee is charged). The usual way for software to be distributed as free software is for the software to be licensed to the recipient with a free software license (or be in the public domain), and the source code of the software to be made available (for a compiled language)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software)

More Information

See our entry on the Free Software Principles and visit the site of the Free Software Foundation

The vision of Oekonux on free software is here at http://www.oekonux.org/introduction/blotter/

How is Free Software related to Open Source?, see at http://www.anat.org.au/stillopen/blog/2007/08/19/open-source-ideologies/

The term Open Source is defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Rob Myers keeps a directory of Free Software Applications at http://robmyers.org/wiki/index.php/Free_Software_Applications

David Wheeler maintains a reference page on Free Software and Open Source Software.