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# Free software movement

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Free software means, for most people, software that is without monetary cost. As a phrase, however, "free software" has been employed by Richard Stallman and his followers to refer not to price, but to four basic freedoms:

1. The freedom to run the program for any purpose
2. The freedom to study and modify the program
3. The freedom to copy the program
4. The freedom to redistribute modified versions of the program

For numbers 2 and 4, access to the program's source code is necessary.

While the above criteria are met by some public domain software (i.e., software that disclaims all copyright), much of what is called free software is copyrighted and licensed, with the rights of coping, modifying and redistributing the software explictly given to the user. One free software license in particular, the GNU General Public License, or GPL, requires that all modified versions of the software must be distributed with the source code, for the purpose of ensuring that all modified versions also meet the above criteria. See free software license, open source license.

See also: Open source, Free Software Foundation

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Last edited June 26, 2001 7:33 pm (diff)
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