Hi Mason,

Thank you for taking this on. It is a significant improvement over the
current page. Your thoughts describe free software well and are in the
direction I hoped you would take it. Well done!

There was some redundancy and organization that imo needed to be
tightened/rearranged and I fiddled with a few other things - for
example, I slaughtered commas and edited for US English as the rest of
the site. onefang's corrections also included (plus one that I found).
Rather than try to explain the changes inline, I have just rewritten in
a way that I think flows better. The length is good. Edit below only
cut 20ish words from you version. Everyone . . . feel free to comment
and refine.

Yes, please continue with a separate page that would discuss why systemd
is not free software. It can be linked as a sub-page from this one.

golinux

---------------------------------------------

What is free software?

When we talk about free software, we don't just mean it has no monetary
cost. A common phrase used to describe free software is "free as in
speech, not as in beer". What this means is that not only can you
download and use the software but that you are free to examine and
modify the source code for that software and give that software away,
either as you received it or with your own modifications and
improvements.

What makes this possible is free software licensing which comes in a
variety of forms. The concept of the public domain for software has
existed for quite some time and it's still is use. However, most free
software today relies on copyright to enforce very specific licensing
terms. The two forms of free software licenses that concern us most are
"copyleft" and "permissive" licenses, exemplified by the Free Software
Foundation's General Public License and the BSD licenses.

The GPL, a copyleft license, essentially says that you're free to use
the software for any purpose and that anyone to whom you give the
software must have all the rights you had when receiving the software to
study, modify and re-distribute the software.

The BSD licenses, which are considered permissive free software
licenses, grant a license to use the software for any purpose but don't
require the creator to share the source code, whether modified or not,
with people who receive the software.

Both licenses include a notice that there is no warranty offered with
the software. The Devuan operating system ships free software that uses
both GPL and BSD licenses.


Why use free software?

Free software benefits from the participation of a global community of
free software developers. Many companies pay free software engineers to
extend free software to meet their needs and the fruits of that labor
are then shared with the community at large. Individual users find free
software projects that appeal to them and volunteer their time to fix
bugs and add features to make that software more reliable and useful.
In contrast, proprietary software source code is jealously guarded and
subject to strict, proprietary licensing to prevent people who use it
from sharing it.

Given the complexity of today's computers, one area where free software
really shines is software security. Free and open source code is
available for everyone to study and as such, many flaws and
vulnerabilities are identified and fixed before users can be impacted.
For critical vulnerabilities that impact users directly, the free
software model guarantees that as soon as a correction is available,
everyone can share it. If multiple solutions are found, the best can be
chosen or new solutions might be synthesized based on the work of many
authors. Compare this with proprietary software where few if any people
have access to the source code and it's up to proprietary software
vendors to identify and correct flaws in the software.

Perhaps the biggest reason to participate in the free software ecosystem
is that it empowers computer users to make the world a better place.
They are free to share their innovations and improvements, find and fix
bugs, learn and teach each other and share a sense of adventure and
community that can be found nowhere else.


Where can I learn more?

There are several organizations that promote the use of free software,
and they've written compelling descriptions of what free software is and
why it matters to them. Here are two of those:

     https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
     https://www.debian.org/intro/free

For more discussion of the GPL and BSD licenses:

     https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0
     http://netbsd.org/about/redistribution.html