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authorPatrick J Volkerding <volkerdi@slackware.com>2010-05-19 08:58:23 +0000
committerEric Hameleers <alien@slackware.com>2018-05-31 22:43:05 +0200
commitb76270bf9e6dd375e495fec92140a79a79415d27 (patch)
tree3dbed78b2279bf9f14207a16dc634b90995cbd40 /misc/slackbook/html/introduction-opensource.html
parent5a12e7c134274dba706667107d10d231517d3e05 (diff)
downloadcurrent-b76270bf9e6dd375e495fec92140a79a79415d27.tar.gz
Slackware 13.1slackware-13.1
Wed May 19 08:58:23 UTC 2010 Slackware 13.1 x86_64 stable is released! Lots of thanks are due -- see the RELEASE_NOTES and the rest of the ChangeLog for credits. The ISOs are on their way to replication, a 6 CD-ROM 32-bit set and a dual-sided 32-bit/64-bit x86/x86_64 DVD. We are taking pre-orders now at store.slackware.com, and offering a discount if you sign up for a subscription. Consider picking up a copy to help support the project. Thanks again to the Slackware community for testing, contributing, and generally holding us to a high level of quality. :-) Enjoy!
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
+ "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" />
+<title>Open Source and Free Software</title>
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+<div class="SECT1">
+<h1 class="SECT1"><a id="INTRODUCTION-OPENSOURCE" name="INTRODUCTION-OPENSOURCE">1.3 Open
+Source and Free Software</a></h1>
+
+<p>Within the Linux community, there are two major ideological movements at work. The
+Free Software movement (which we'll get into in a moment) is working toward the goal of
+making all software free of intellectual property restrictions. Followers of this
+movement believe these restrictions hamper technical improvement and work against the
+good of the community. The Open Source movement is working toward most of the same goals,
+but takes a more pragmatic approach to them. Followers of this movement prefer to base
+their arguments on the economic and technical merits of making source code freely
+available, rather than the moral and ethical principles that drive the Free Software
+Movement.</p>
+
+<p>At the other end of the spectrum are groups that wish to maintain tighter controls
+over their software.</p>
+
+<p>The Free Software movement is headed by the Free Software Foundation, a fund-raising
+organization for the GNU project. Free software is more of an ideology. The oft-used
+expression is &#8220;free as in speech, not free as in beer&#8221;. In essence, free
+software is an attempt to guarantee certain rights for both users and developers. These
+freedoms include the freedom to run the program for any reason, to study and modify the
+source code, to redistribute the source, and to share any modifications you make. In
+order to guarantee these freedoms, the GNU General Public License (GPL) was created. The
+GPL, in brief, provides that anyone distributing a compiled program which is licensed
+under the GPL must also provide source code, and is free to make modifications to the
+program as long as those modifications are also made available in source code form. This
+guarantees that once a program is &#8220;opened&#8221; to the community, it cannot be
+&#8220;closed&#8221; except by consent of every author of every piece of code (even the
+modifications) within it. Most Linux programs are licensed under the GPL.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to note that the GPL does not say anything about price. As odd as it
+may sound, you can charge for free software. The &#8220;free&#8221; part is in the
+liberties you have with the source code, not in the price you pay for the software.
+(However, once someone has sold you, or even given you, a compiled program licensed under
+the GPL they are obligated to provide its source code as well.)</p>
+
+<p>Another popular license is the BSD license. In contrast to the GPL, the BSD license
+gives no requirement for the release of a program's source code. Software released under
+the BSD license allows redistribution in source or binary form provided only a few
+conditions are met. The author's credentials cannot be used as a sort of advertisement
+for the program. It also indemnifies the author from liability for damages that may arise
+from the use of the software. Much of the software included in Slackware Linux is BSD
+licensed.</p>
+
+<p>At the forefront of the younger Open Source movement, the Open Source Initiative is an
+organization that solely exists to gain support for open source software, that is,
+software that has the source code available as well as the ready-to-run program. They do
+not offer a specific license, but instead they support the various types of open source
+licenses available.</p>
+
+<p>The idea behind the OSI is to get more companies behind open source by allowing them
+to write their own open source licenses and have those licenses certified by the Open
+Source Initiative. Many companies want to release source code, but do not want to use the
+GPL. Since they cannot radically change the GPL, they are offered the opportunity to
+provide their own license and have it certified by this organization.</p>
+
+<p>While the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative work to help each
+other, they are not the same thing. The Free Software Foundation uses a specific license
+and provides software under that license. The Open Source Initiative seeks support for
+all open source licenses, including the one from the Free Software Foundation. The
+grounds on which each argues for making source code freely available sometimes divides
+the two movements, but the fact that two ideologically diverse groups are working toward
+the same goal lends credence to the efforts of each.</p>
+</div>
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