SoftwareĬompanies are looking for ways to protect their assets, so they often Of course, different circumstances call for different licenses. It's up to the author to include a license which declares how a Or her creation (software in this case), in ways that are acceptable to A license is the author's way of allowing others to use his In most countries, newly written software is automaticallyĬopyrighted. Imply when they speak about free software, let's take a little detourĪnd enter the world of software licenses.Ĭopyrights are one method of protecting the creators' rights of certain Is much more complicated than that, though. To the uninitiated, software is either free or it isn't. Guarantee that it will stay free of charge. Product or to drive a smaller competitor out of business. No cost is usually a weapon in a marketing campaign to promote a related Pay for it, is hardly free at all, You may be forbidden to pass it on,Īnd you're most certainly not allowed to modify it. Software described as free, but only in the sense that you don't need to So, when we speak ofįree Software, we mean freedom, not payment. Rest refer to 'liberty' and 'lack of constraint'. If you look at an English dictionary, it lists almost twentyĭifferent meanings for 'free', and only one of them is 'at no cost'. It isn't used the way they expect – 'free' means 'free of cost' Many people new to this subject are confused because of the word The terminology debate reflects the underlying philosophical differences, but the practical requirements as well as other things discussed on this site are essentially the same for Free Software and Open Source Software.

In February 1998, a group of people moved to replace the term Free Software with Open Source Software.