indessed roscivs

In 1999, Richard Stallman penned an essay that is now known as The Free Software Definition. In it, he details four requirements, or “the four freedoms,” which are requisite for software to be considered “free” (as in liberty, not as in price):

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3).

(Access to the software’s source code is a prerequisite for freedoms 1 and 3.)

There are two types of Free Software licenses. The first type simply provides the recipient of these software with these four freedoms. The second type requires that anyone who distributes this software must do so with a license that guarantees the four freedoms. The second type is called “copyleft” (a pun on “copyright”).

The difference is easy to explain. In the 1990s, Microsoft took the source code to some Free Software called BSD, and copied some of that code into Windows in order to allow Windows to connect to the Internet. But when Microsoft distributes Windows, they do not provide the recipient of Windows with those four freedoms. This is a license of the first kind.

In 2002, Apple took the source code to some Free Software called KHTML, and copied some of that code in order to make Safari, the default web browser on Apple systems. When Apple distributes Safari, they are required to provide those four freedoms for the part of the KHTML code they copied. In other words, they provide the source code, and allow everyone the freedom to do with that source code the things listed above.

I really like the Four Freedoms, and I distribute much of the software I write on my own time under a copyleft license that Richard Stallman wrote, called the General Public License (or GPL) version 2.0. However, on June 29th, Richard Stallman released a new version of this license, the GPL version 3.0, which he will now release all his software under. This license is much longer, much more complex, and has many more requirements than version 2.0, and many people in the Free Software community are questioning the wisdom of the license—including me. I will likely not use the license for any code I write myself, and will be very hesitant to contribute source code to GPLv3 projects.

In my next post, I’ll talk about my reasons why.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 14th, 2007 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.