Free software movement

The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing the freedoms that allow software users to run, study, change, and redistribute it. copies of the same with or without changes. Drawing on the traditions and philosophies of hacker culture and academia of the 1970s, Richard Stallman formally founded the movement in 1983, with the launch of the GNU Project. Stallman established the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the motion.

The goal of the movement was to give users freedom, replacing software with restrictive license terms, like proprietary software, with free software.

Philosophy

Most members of the free software movement believe that all software should come with the freedoms stated in the definition of free software. Many argue that it is to prohibit or prevent people from exercising these freedoms and that they are necessary to create a decent society where users can help each other and take control over the use of a computer.

The free software movement also believes that all software needs free documentation, but this does not hold a strong position in other types of work. Some proponents of free software support that works that serve a practical purpose should also be free.

Some followers of the free software movement do not believe that proprietary software is strictly immoral. However, they reason that freedom is valuable (both socially and pragmatically) as a property of software per se, independent of its technical quality in the strict sense. Furthermore, they could use the term "free software" to distance themselves from claims such as that "open source software; it is always technically superior to proprietary software. In this regard, they object that advocates of "open source software software", by concentrating solely on technical merits, encourage users to sacrifice their freedom (and the long-term benefits that derived from its use) in exchange for short-term benefits that proprietary software may provide.

Differences from open source software

Supporters of open source argue for the pragmatic virtues of free software rather than questions of morality. Their basic disagreement with the Free Software Foundation is their blanket condemnation of proprietary software. There are many programmers who enjoy supporting and using free software but make a living developing proprietary software, and do not consider their actions immoral. The "official" Free software and open source software licenses are slightly different, with the former generally considered more stringent, while open source software licenses they are generally dark.

Actions

Develop free software

The central work of the free software movement focused on software development. The free software movement also rejects proprietary software, refusing to install software that does not give them the freedoms of free software. The ideas generated by GNU partners are, in turn, an attempt to promote a "cooperative environment" who understands the benefits of having a local community and a global community.

GNU and Tux mascots around free software supporters in FISL 16.

Raise awareness

Some supporters of the free software movement hold talks or conferences to raise awareness of software freedom. This is considered important since people who receive free software, but are not aware that it is free software, will later accept a non-free replacement or add software that is not free software.

Legislation

There has been a lot of lobbying work done against software patents and the expansion of copyright laws. Other lobby groups directly target the use of free software by government agencies and government-funded projects.

Disputes

Should principles be compromised?

Eric Raymond criticizes the speed with which the free software movement is progressing, suggesting that certain temporary compromises should be made based on long-term improvements. Raymond argues that this could increase awareness of free software and thus increase the movement's influence on relevant standards and legislation.

Richard Stallman, on the other hand, sees the movement's current tenets as a major cause for concern.

How do programmers get paid?

Stallman argues here that there is a tendency to confuse the idea of "free": there is nothing wrong with asking programmers to pay for their work on a project. Restricting and controlling the user's decisions about use is what violates freedom. Stallman argues that, in some cases, the monetary incentive is not necessary for the motivation to program, since the pleasure of expressing creativity is a reward in itself.

"Viral" Licenses

The free software movement advocates the copyleft license scheme (often called virus or viral licenses). In its strongest form, copyleft states that any derivative work of copyleft-licensed software must also carry a copyleft license, so the license spreads from one work to another like a kind of virus. Critics of copyleft disagree that this clause is in line with the free software movement's emphasis on "freedoms," especially when alternatives such as the MIT, BSD and Apache licenses are more permissive. Proponents argue that copylefted work cannot normally be incorporated into non-free software projects. They stress that copyleft licenses are not for all uses and that developers can simply opt out of using the software under these licenses.

Licensing proliferation and compatibility

The proliferation of FOSS licenses is a concern in the free software domain due to compatibility considerations between licences, which limits and complicates the reuse of source code between free software projects. The OSI and the FSF maintain their own lists with dozens of existing and acceptable free software licences. There is a consensus that the creation of new licenses should be minimized at all costs and these should be compatible with the main existing licences. A controversy arose around the upgrade from GPLv2 to GPLv3 in 2007, as the updated license is not backward compatible. Various projects, mainly among open source supporters such as the kernel Linux decided not to use the GPLv3, while the GNU projects did.