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The free software movement was conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman to satisfy the need for and to give the benefit of "software freedom" to computer users. The Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985 to provide the organizational structure which Stallman correctly foresaw would be necessary to advance his Free Software ideas.
From 1998 onward, alternative terms for free software came into use. The most common are "software libre", "[[free and open source software]]" ("FOSS") and "free, libre and open source software" ("FLOSS"). The "Software Freedom Law Center" was founded in 2005 to protect and advance FLOSS
Free software, which may or may not be distributed free of charge, is distinct from "[[freeware]]" which, by definition, does not require payment for use. The authors or copyright holders of freeware may retain all rights to the software; it is not necessarily permissible to reverse engineering, modify, or redistribute freeware.
{{main|History of free software}}
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the freedoms that are provided by free software. Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and by hardware manufacturers who were glad that people were making software that made their hardware useful. Organizations of users and suppliers were formed to facilitate the exchange of software, see, for example, SHARE. By the late 1960s change was inevitable: 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.
In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker (programmer subculture) community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the [[GNU Project]], saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the [[GNU operating system]] began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He developed a free software definition and the concept of "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all.
The FSF list is not prescriptive: free licensees can exist which the FSF has not heard about, or considered important enough to write about. So it's possible for a license to be free and not in the FSF list. However, the OSI list is prescriptive: they only list licenses that have been submitted, considered and approved. This formal process of approval is what defines a license as Open Source. Thus, it's not possible for a license to be Open Source and not on the OSI approved list.
Apart from these two organizations, the [[Debian]] project is seen by some to provide useful advice on whether particular licenses comply with their [[Debian Free Software Guidelines]]. Debian doesn't publish a list of ''approved'' licenses, so its judgments have to be tracked by checking what software they have allowed into their software archives. That is summarized at the Debian web site.</ref>
It is rare that a license is announced as being in-compliance by either FSF or OSI guidelines and not vice versa (the [[Netscape Public License]] used for early versions of Mozilla being an exception, as well as the [[NASA Open Source Agreement]]).
There is debate over the [[computer security|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,
== Commercial viability and adoption==
Free software played a part in the development of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the infrastructure of [[dot-com companies]].<ref name="Web Server Survey">{{cite web|url=http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html |title=Web Server Usage Survey |author=Netcraft}}<//ref>
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.
Free software is generally available at no cost and can result in permanently lower costs compared to [[proprietary software]]. With free software, businesses can fit software to their specific needs by changing the software themselves or by hiring programmers to modify it for them. Free software often has no warranty, and more importantly, generally does not assign legal liability to anyone. However, warranties are permitted between any two parties upon the condition of the software and its usage. Such an agreement is made separately from the free software license.
A report by Standish Group says that adoption of [[open source]] has caused a drop in revenue to the [[proprietary software]] industry by about $60 billion per year.</ref>
== Controversies ==
In 2006, [[OpenBSD]] started the first campaign against the use of [[binary blobs]], in [[kernel (computer science)|kernels]]. Blobs are usually freely distributable [[device driver]]s for hardware from vendors that do not reveal driver source code to users or developers. This restricts the users' freedom to effectively modify the software and distribute modified versions. Also, since the blobs are undocumented and may have [[computer bug|bugs]], they pose a security risk to any [[operating system]] whose kernel includes them. The proclaimed aim of the campaign against blobs is to collect hardware documentation that allows developers to write free software drivers for that hardware, ultimately enabling all free operating systems to become or remain blob-free.
The issue of binary blobs in the [[Linux kernel]] and other device drivers motivated some developers in Ireland to launch [[gNewSense]], a GNU/Linux distribution with all the binary blobs removed. The project received support from the [[Free Software Foundation]].</ref>
=== BitKeeper ===
{{main|BitKeeper#License concerns}}
[[Larry McVoy]] invited high-profile free software projects to use his proprietary [[versioning 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.</ref>
Following the apparent [[reverse engineering]] of BitKeeper's protocols, McVoy withdrew permission for gratis use by free software projects, leading the Linux kernel community to develop a free software replacement called [[Git (software)|Git]].
{{main|Software patents and free software}}
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.</ref>
== See also ==
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