Free Software Foundation
“In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, it was normal for computer users to have the freedoms 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. In the 70s and early 80s, companies started to use copyright to prohibit sharing software, and they began using technical measures such as only distributing binary copies to prevent computer users from being able to study and modify the software”
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), established in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free software, particularly the GNU operating system, used widely in its GNU/Linux variant. To make software available as free software, the software has to be accompanied by a software licence saying that the copyright holder allows these acts, and the human readable form of the program (the source code) must be made available. According to Richard Stallman (the founder of Free Software Foundation) software is free software if people who receive a copy of the software have the following four freedoms:
• Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study and modify the program.
• Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
• Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the
public, so that the whole community benefit
Richard Stallman
