http://labor-liber.org
Last significant update : 26 August 2005
Copyright © 2004 - 2005 Cédric Musso, http://labor-liber.org.
Some rights reserved, according to the terms of theCreative Commons - Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
Free software is not a matter of price (it is, but that's secondary).
Copyright is a set of exclusive rights
(with exceptions) granted to the authors of
creative works (literary or musical works, movies,
sound recordings, paintings, photographs or software, ...).
These rights to use, perform, reproduce, sell or adapt the work are granted
to the authors for a limited time after which the work
passes into the public domain.
The holder of a copyright can require that a license be accepted as a condition of being allowed to use, reproduce, or modify the licensed work.
A software license defines the authorised uses The use of a software program which has not yet passed into the public domain is therefore restricted to the uses authorized by its license.
It is not forbidden to appropriate public domain software, that is to sell users something which belonged to them in the first place.
Copyleft imposes that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it.
Copyleft uses copyright law to guarante that every user has freedom.
The most widespread copyleft software license is the GNU General Public License (GPL) of the Free Software Foundation.
Machine, binary language.
00101101 01101100 00101101 01101100 01010011 11001011 01010011 11001011 00011001 00111100 00011001 00111100 11000101 10100101 11000101 10100101 00101101 01101100 00101101 01101100 01010011 11001011 01010011 11001011 00011001 00111100 00011001 00111100 11000101 10100101 11000101 10100101
Human readable language.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
int count;
for (count=1 ; count<=500 ; count++) {
printf("I shall not throw paper planes in class.\n");
}
return 0;
}
Source code -> binary code = Compilation
Binary code -> Source code = Reverse engineering, often forbidden => black box
The availability of source code is a necessary condition (but not a sufficient condition) for Free software.
| 1960s | IBM has 70 to 80% of the world's harware and software market, and invents the notion of series of compatible computers. |
| 1965 | DEC manufactures the first mini-computers. |
| 1969 | First version of the Unix operating system. |
| 1971 | Intel sells the first microprocessors. |
| 1973 | The first micro-computers. |
| 1981 | IBM lauches the Personal Computer (PC) and makes micro-computers respectable. It's operating system is Microsoft MS/DOS. |
| 1984 | Apple launches the Macintosh, with the first general public graphical user interface. |
| 1984 | Beginning of the GNU project. |
| 1990 | Windows 3.0. |
| 1991 | The development of Linux begins. |
| 1994 | Version 1.0 of Linux. |
| 1998 | Open Source Initiative. |
| 1960s | Software is Free, although the expression doesn't exist yet. |
| 1969 | Unbundling of hardware and software (and services) pricing by IBM, under the threat of an antitrust lawsuit. |
| 1976 | An Open Letter to Hobbyists, Bill Gates:
most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid ? |
| 1980s | Software becomes more and more proprietary. |
| 1984 | GNU project. |
| 1991 | Linux. |
| 1993 | Debian GNU/Linux |
| 1998 | Open Source Initiative. |
Recursive acronym for "GNU's Not UNIX" pronounced "guh-noo" (audible g).
1984, Richard M. Stallman (RMS)
Goals:
Free as in Freedom
Mission: Preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and defend the rights of Free Software users.
1998 : Initiative to promote Free software under the name of Open Source software:
Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation which:
Open Source software is Free Software, and Free software is Open Source software.
Different approaches:
( This does not mean that the Free software movement, which promotes copyleft, is not pragmatic. )
The OSI's definition of Open Source in one paragraph is similar to the definition of Free software of the FSF:
Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting
independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code.
To be OSI certified, the software must be distributed under a license
that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the
software freely.
Kernel: the core of an operating system (manages hardware...).
By 1990, the GNU operating system was almost complete; the only major missing component was the kernel.
1991, Linus Torvalds:
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
Linux was quickly released under the GNU GPL, and got to version 1.0 in 1994!
One should talk about the Linux kernel, and the GNU/Linux operating system.
Linux is also emblematic of the success of the Free software development model.
While Windows and MacOS have a single distributor, GNU/Linux can be built from scratch, and is available from various vendors.
Distribution =
= a set of packages (software components) including an installation and update system.
There are many distributions, suited fo various uses.
THE free distribution.
Debian has an exemplary social contract, and the Debian Free Software Guidelines have been used as a model for the Open Source Definition
Debian has been growing and improving since 1993.
Internet = network of networks
The cooperative functioning of Free software:
The Internet has always mostly worked with Free software:
Before Linux, most experts thought that software, beyond a significant size, could only be built as cathedrals, that is designed by a few experts, et with a strict hierarchy (pyramidal structure). The development of Linux is open to everybody, and looks like a bazar (networked structure).
The success of Linux surprised Eric S. Raymond. The Cathedral and the Bazar analyses what he has learnt from Linux in the practice of the management of the Free software project fetchmail. Some of his conclusions are technical. Here are a few others:
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.Linus Torvalds.
Standardization is both the best and the worst thing. It may slow down innovation, but it allows interconnection.
Interoperability: Compatibility of hardware and software.
De-facto standards may be:
Netscape and Internet Explorer were successively dominant. As competitors, they were innovating. Dominant, they have blocked the development of the Web.
File formats ought to be open standards:
Dominant proprietary standards block or even eliminate free competition. In an industry like software, innovation is both:
Competition becomes combat when the competitors begin trying to impede each other instead of advancing themselves. Innovation requires free competition.
Software is an immaterial asset:
Like information and knowledge, software is a peculiar asset:
Fair use: citation, private copy, freedom of speech.
When software has become a commercial asset, in the 1970's, its legal protection has converged towards the use of existing tools, and the predominance of copyright.
Copyright protects the expression of an idea. The protection of software by copyright allows its use only within the scope of its license, but it doesn't forbid making similar and/or compatible software.
However, there's been a dramatic increase in the number of software patents in the United States since the 1980's ; but also in Europe, whereas software patents are clearly forbidden!
Software patents are a threat against interoperability, innovation, and free competition:
If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of
today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would
be at a complete standstill today.
Bill Gates.
The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no
patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to
impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in
excluding future competitors.
Bill Gates.
| License | Open Source | Free | Copyleft | GPL compatible | Estimates in 2002 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GNU General Public License (GPL) | yes | yes | yes | yes | 73 % |
| GNU Library/Lesser General Public License (LGPL) | yes | yes | yes | yes | 10 % |
| BSD License (original) | yes | yes | no | no | 7 % |
| BSD License (modified) | yes | yes | no | yes | |
| Apache Software License | yes | yes | no | no | |
| Mozilla Public License | yes | yes | partly | no |
Certains disent que la licence GNU GPL est contagieuse. Les libertés associées aux logiciels qu'elle protège sont contagieuses.
Who should your computer take its orders from? With a plan they call "trusted computing", large media corporations, together with computer companies, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you.
"Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name.
"Free Culture" is the title of an enlightening conference by Lawrence Lessig, a lawyer. It's refrain is:
The same lawyer about the Internet:
When the content layer, the logical layer, and the physical layer
are all effectively owned by a handful of companies, free of any
requirements of neutrality or openness, what will you ask
then? »
Lawrence Lessig
In Homesteading the Noosphere, Eric S. Raymond analyses the
hacker culture as a gift culture:
Social status is determined not by what you control but
by what you give away.
The hacker ethic according to Steven Levy in Hackers:Heroes of the Computer Revolution:
A model ?
Several models thanks to freedom, diversity, planetary scale:
And Responsibility.
