Workshop on Free Software: Introduction --------------------------------------- by Robert J. Chassell <> 1. Our hosts asked me to lead a Workshop on Free Software What I want to do first is explain what free software is, and describe its history briefly. Then I will describe how the freedom to copy, study, modify, and redistribute software leads to a world om which software does what you want, where software is reliable and secure; a world in which you have a choice of vendors; a world in which you have the legal right to start a business; a world that rewards the law abiding, not law breakers; a world in which you can teach your children to share. <> 2. Overview What is open source, freely redistributable software? Free software is software to which you have the legal right to copy, study, modify, and redistribute. You have the freedom to use the software as you wish. <> The right to study means that no one is prevented from learning how others succeeded. The right to study is the right to look ahead, to advance, by sitting on the shoulders of giants. The right to modify means that you can write what you need. Or you can hire someone to write what you need. The computer works for you; you do not work for the computer. As a practical matter, developers cannot foresee whether someone in Germany will use a program first written in Mexico. The right to modify means that you can be efficient. You do not have to recreate what others have already created, but you can reuse their code. You can advance the work they did, rather than repeat it. <> The right to copy and redistribute software is the right to use your own property, your own means of production. You are permitted to make new copies of software. You can charge for these copies, or give them away. Others may do the same. Because others will look on and correct your mistakes, your software will become reliable. <> Because competition in a competitive market forces down the price of free software, no one enters the software industry to sell software as such. <> Instead, and this is often not understood, a business enters the industry to make money by selling solutions that customers wish to buy. More on this further in the talk. 3. Brief history. <> Originally, all software was free. That is to say, programmers had the legal right to copy, study, modify, and redistribute it. Indeed, in the beginning, you could not copyright a computer program and you could not patent any of its mathematics. Trade secrecy was not onerous. Beginning at the time that main frames and mini-computers began to give way to personal computers, it became legal for companies to copyright computer programs, and legal for them to patent mathematical procedures. Software vendors stopped supplying source code. <> In the early and mid 1980s, these hindrances inspired Richard Stallman and others (including me) to start GNU, a project to create an open source, freely redistributable operating system and associated applications. In the early 1990s, the main part of the GNU Project faced delays in the highly advanced operating system kernel it was developing. Linus Torvalds, a young Finn, wrote his own, less advanced kernel. Linus called this kernel Linux, and adopted the GNU environment (a host of programs) and the GNU General Public License, which made his contribution freely redistributable. The combination of the GNU environment and the Linux kernel led to a usable operating system and set of applications called GNU/Linux, a name that is often shortened simply to Linux. In the past couple of years, GNU/Linux has become widely known. We are here today because of the success of GNU/Linux. <> 4. How is software made free? Freedom requires a legal and institutional framework. Software freedom is based on a special copyright license, <> the GNU General Public License (GPL). This license gives you more rights than most licenses. In essense, it forbids you to forbid; you may do everything else. Your and others rights are reciprocal; this encourages collaboration. The license protects programmers from having their work stolen from them and it protects users from being over charged for shoddy work. <> 5. Let me go through the freedoms that are protected by the GNU General Public License: copy, study, modify, and redistribute. But first, while talking about freedom, let me clear up a verbal issue that sometimes confuses English speakers. <<`Free' has two meanings in English>> The low price of free software leads some English speakers to think that the word `free' in the phrase `free software' means they can obtain it without cost. This is not the definition, which is about freedom, but it is an easy misunderstanding. The English word `free' has several meanings. As a Mexican friend of mine -- and leader, by the way, of a major free software project -- once said to me, English is broken; it does not distinguish between `free beer' and `free speech'. Spanish, on the other hand, distinguishes between `gratis' and `libre'. When you speak of `free beer', you mean beer that is gratis; but when you speak of `free speech' you mean freedom. Free software is `libre' software. <> Incidentally, Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens invented the phrase `open source' a few years ago as a synonym `free software'. They wanted to work around the dislike many companies have of the word `free'. The phrase is popular; Eric and Bruce succeeded in their purpose. However, I (and now, Bruce also) prefer the term `free software' since it better conveys the goal of freedom; the proposition that every man and woman, whereever he or she lives, the right to do first rate work, and must not be forbidden from doing so. <> 6. The key freedoms: copy, study, modify, and redistribute. Let me go through this list: <> First, the right to copy. Not many people own a factory that would enable them to copy a car. Indeed, to copy a car is so difficult that we use a different word, we speak of `manufacturing' a car. And there are not many car manufacturers in the world. Not many people own or have ready access to a car factory. But everyone with a computer owns a software factory, a device for manufacturing software, that is to say, for making new copies. Because copying software is so easy, we do not use the word `manufacturing'; we usually do not even think of it as a kind of manufacturing, but it is. The right to copy software is the right to use your own property, your own means of production. Millions of people, a few percent of the world's population, own this means of production. Naturally, there have been efforts to take away your rights to use your own property as a factory that you own. <> Second, the right to study. This right is of little direct interest to people who are not programmers. It is like the right of a lawyer to read legal text books. Unless you are a lawyer, you probably wish to avoid such books. However, this right to study has several implications, both for those who program and for everyone else. The right to study means that people in places like Mexico, or India, or Europe can study the same code as people in Japan or the United States. It means that these people are not kept from learning how others succeeded. Bear in mind that many programmers work under restrictions that forbid them from seeing others' code. Rather than sit on the shoulders of those who went before, which is the best way to see ahead and to advance, they are thrown into the mud. The right to study is the right to look ahead, and to advance. Moreover, the right to study means that the software itself must be made available in a manner that humans can read. Software comes in two forms, one readable only by computers and the other readable by people. The form that a computer can read is what the computer runs. This form is called a binary or executable. The form that a human can read is called source code. It is what a human programmer creates, and is translated by another computer program into the binary or executable form. <> The next right, the right too modify, is the right to fix a problem or enhance a program. For most people, this means your right or your organization's right to hire someone to do the job for you, in much the same way you hire an auto mechanic to fix your car or a carpenter to extend your home. Modification is helpful. Application developers cannot think of all the ways others will use their software. Developers cannot foresee the new burdens that will be put on their code. They cannot anticipate all the local conditions, whether someone in Malaysia will use a program first written in Finland. <> Finally, of these legal rights, comes the right to redistribute. This means that you, who own a computer, a software factory, have the right to make copies of a program and redistribute it. You can charge for these copies, or give them away. Others may do the same. Of course, several existing, large software manufacturers want to forbid you from using your own property. They cannot win in a free market, so they attack in other ways. In the United States, for example, we see newly proposed laws to take away your freedom. The right to redistribute, so long as it is defended and upheld, means that software is sold in a competitive, free market. This means you can get what you want, at a fair market price. <> 7. What do these freedoms bring to the new economy? First, and foremost, these freedoms create a world in which software does what you want. If you don't find an application that does what you want, you may write your own code, or hire someone to do so. You have the legal right, and with the source code, the practical right, to adapt other code to what you want -- this is often more efficient than writing from scratch. Or, if you don't want to spend the money and resources, you can look around; often, you will find that someone else has faced nearly the same problem as you, and you can use that person's work. <> Secondly, these freedoms create a world in which software is reliable. With stable, free software, your computer should stop when the electric power fails or when a physical component breaks, like a hard disk. Neither of these are caused by software. If you use release-quality software, rather than experimental software, your computer should hardly ever crash. And if you use an experimental product on an otherwise stable system, problems with that software should not effect anything else. My own experience is that my computer stops sometimes when I test experimental software on it; it stops when the power fails, and when my disk drive breaks. It works the rest of the time. Reliability comes because many people can and want to fix problems. <> Thirdly, your work should be secure. Your computer should avoid what you do not want. Just recently, for example, a large number of people who used proprietary software from Microsoft were hurt by a virus called the `Love Bug'. The vendor had created a system that is foolishly vulnerable. You can, of course, make free software equally vulnerable, just as you can open the door to any house or business and invite thieves to walk in. But none of the free software distributions that I know are so vulnerable. This is because people want to avoid harm and are able to insist that their vendors protect them. You should have confidence in your privacy. Of course, the free software producers don't always succeed, but on the whole, they have done well. <> Freedom means that you, as a customer, have a choice among those who would provide you with software and associated services. You are not in a `take it or leave it' situation. You can choose among your vendors. <> Freedom means that you, as a businessman, have the legal right to start a business. Freedom means that businesses are rewarded, with sales and profits, for satisfying customers legally, rather than rewarded by overcharging and hurting customers, which is illegal, at least in the US. <> Freedom means that you can teach your children to share the software they have, legally. <> 18. Conclusion Your opportunities depend on your legal right to copy, study, modify, and redistribute software under a free license. Freedom is key. Freedom leads to: collaboration lower prices reliability efficiency security fewer barriers to entry fewer barriers to use more opportunities ###