What is Open Source Software?



In 1985, a man named Richard Stallman, who didn’t like the current situation, created what’s known as the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which promoted the alternative of free software (free as in freedom, not as in free coffee). He drafted 4 criteria for a software to be considered free:
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
All of this without requiring a pre-given handwritten permission from the program author to the user. By just seeing the license, and knowing that it is a free software license, you can do all the 4 things stated above, and that is what refer to as free software.
Today, there are tens of free software licenses that software developer use to put their program under. The most famous one for that is the GPL (GNU Public License), which was initially released in 1989. There are millions of free software around the world today.
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