Free Software Free software is software that can be used studied and modified copied changed with little or no restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form Free software is available gratis free of charge in most cases In practice for software to be distributed as free software the human readable form of the program the source code must be made available along with a notice granting the user permission to further adapt the code and continue its redistribution for free This notice either grants a free software license or releases the source code into the public domain http en wikipedia org wiki Free software Copyright 2009 by Helene G Kershner Open Source Software In the beginning all software was free in the 1960s when IBM and others sold the first large scale computers these machines came with software which was free This software could be freely shared among users The software came written in a programming language source code available and it could be improved and modified Manufacturers were happy that people were writing software that made their machines useful 1 Then proprietary software dominated the software landscape as manufacturers removed access to the source code IBM and others realized that most users couldn t or didn t want to fix their own software and There was money to be made in leasing or licensing software Adapted from http eu conecta it paper brief history open source html 1 http en wikipedia org wiki Free software Copyright 2009 by Helene G Kershner Open Source Software By the mid 1970s almost all software was proprietary Proprietary software is software that is owned by an individual or a company usually the one that developed it There are almost always major restrictions on its use and its source code is almost always kept secret users were not allowed to redistribute it 1 source code is not available users cannot modify the programs Software is an additional product that was for sale In 1980 US copyright law was modified to include software 1 Adapted from http eu conecta it paper brief history open source html 1 http en wikipedia org wiki Free software Copyright 2009 by Helene G Kershner Open Source Software In late 1970s and early 1980s two different groups started what became known as the open source software movement East coast Richard Stallman 1985 formerly a programmer at the MIT AI Lab launched the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation to satisfy the need for and give the benefit of software freedom to computer users 1 ultimate goal of the GNU Project was to build a free operating system the GNU General Public License GPL was designed to ensure that the software produced by GNU will remain free and to promote the production of more and more free software Adapted from http eu conecta it paper brief history open source html 1 http en wikipedia org wiki Free software Copyright 2009 by Helene G Kershner Free Software Foundation Guiding Principles Free software is a matter of liberty not price To understand the concept you should think of free as in free speech right not as in free beer gift Free software is a matter of the users freedom to run copy distribute study change and improve the software 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 Access to the source code is a precondition for this The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor freedom 2 The freedom to improve the program and release your improvements and modified versions in general to the public so that the whole community benefits freedom 3 Access to the source code is a precondition for this http www gnu org philosophy free sw html Copyright 2009 by Helene G Kershner Free Software Foundation Guiding Principles A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms Thus you should be free to redistribute copies either with or without modifications either gratis or charging a fee for distribution to anyone anywhere Being free to do these things means among other things that you do not have to ask or pay for permission You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play without even mentioning that they exist If you do publish your changes you should not be required to notify anyone in particular or in any particular way http www gnu org philosophy free sw html This is a philosophy a world view Copyright 2009 by Helene G Kershner Free Software Foundation Very counter culture Hacker is considered a good guy Hacker computer security someone involved in computer security insecurity Hacker programmer subculture a programmer subculture originating in the US academia in the 1960s which is nowadays mainly notable for the free software open source movement Hacker hobbyist an enthusiastic home computer hobbyist http en wikipedia org wiki Hacker Cracker is a bad guy A cracker is someone who cracks software or digital media Software cracking is the modification of software to remove protection methods copy protections trial demo version serial number hardware key date checks CD check or software annoyances like nag screens and adware http en wikipedia org wiki Cracker computing Copyright 2009 by Helene G Kershner Open Source Software West coast the Computer Science Research Group CSRG of the University of California at Berkeley was improving the Unix system and building applications which quickly become BSD Unix Unix was initially developed by AT T employees 1 efforts were funded mainly by DARPA contracts a network of Unix programmers around the world helped to debug maintain and improve the system in late 1980s distributed under the BSD license one of the first open source licenses Unfortunately still contained some components that were proprietary requiring a license from AT T Adapted from http eu conecta it paper brief history open source html 1 http en wikipedia org wiki UNIX Copyright 2008 by Helene G Kershner Open Source Software During the 1980s and early 1990s open source software continued its development initially in several relatively isolated groups Slowly much of the software was integrated The various groups merged As a result of this complete operating environments could be built on top of Unix using open source software Many Internet ISPs use UNIX as their operating system of choice Adapted from http eu conecta it paper brief history open source html Copyright 2008 by