Free Software

last updated: 18.December.2003
Free software embodies a spirit of computer programming where people enjoy technical or intellectual pursuit, community belonging, mutual help and support, sharing and evolving manuals, hardware investigation, system analysis and, of course, software source code exchange.

Definition

There is no exact definition for Free software, because its scope remains inexact. But, Free software is generally understood to include licensed software that enjoys copyright protection together with rights for inspection, copying, modifying and re-distribution. This combination of copyright with the transfer of these rights is named copyleft, which the GNU licenses embody. A more precise attempt at defining Free software is given by the Free Software Foundation, on the Internet at FSF and in print "Free Software, Free Society", by R. Stallman, GNU Press, 2002 [1-882114-98-1].

legislation

The term "Free" appears constitutional or legislative, but applies to any society where the rights and freedoms of individuals are valued. Because software is so widespread and influences much of people's lives, it is right that legislation governs its use. The ideas in Free software are not anti-business - the freedom to write programs extends to people, business and activity worldwide - but represent principles for delimiting control and ownership of software. In Europe, a legal framework should be provided where Free software is recognised and stands equally alongside copyright, patents, and the rights of individuals.

license

Free software is recognisable through a license, and there are several to choose from. The FSF makes good use of the GPL and LGPL General Public License. Open source is a branch of Free software that looks to tap a marketplace. Not all open source software is available with FSF licenses, and other open source licenses should also be considered. In addition, there exist licenses which provide Free software for specific uses. An example is my dsp_K license, which is concerned with Free software for digital signal processors and embedded systems.

embedded

I am interested in embedded Free software; the dsp_K project is one example. Despite numerous embedded open source vendors and flavours of embedded Linux, there are relatively few embedded Free software projects. In Embedded Free Software I present some issues for embedded Free software.

history

Free software has its roots in the 1970's, with the advent of the home computer pheonomenon and formation of disparate university computer centres using the Internet. Free software availability is not limited to the Internet or bulletin boards. Computer magazines have been publishing copyright software since the 1970s, with permission for users to copy and port their programs and this can be considered as a tributary into the Free software flow. Indeed, software exchange was common practice in the 1950's and 1960's when hardware was the driving cost. Even if a Free software license is not given, certainly the ideas now embodied by "copyleft" would often seem historically present or compatible to a good measure.

copyright

Free software is neither public domain nor shareware, rather it is protected by copyright law. This is important because it qualifies for legal protection (as intellectual property) alongside patents and proprietary works (classed as industrial property). Free software is more than plain copyright though, because it gives it users license to copy, modify and redistribute. Free software cannot be re-licensed without the consent of its authors (and in any event cannot be made less Free than its last Free release). Proprietary software 'opened up' does not qualify as Free software where the Freedom of users given above are restricted. Similarly shareware is not Free software where the license restricts re-distribution rights or when the source code is not made available. Software protected by patent law is not Free, because it too imposes unacceptable restrictions and because Free software is protected by copyright law instead.

European Union

Many people who enjoy Free software are concerned about software that is 'opened up' through a software patent. In themselves patents aren't a problem, but problems can occur when patents are granted with ambiguous wording or with wider scope than might appear to be the intent.

Patents

The European Union has proposed patent guidelines for "computer implemented" inventions, including software elements. Notwithstanding my subjective view that software patents (or industrial property) are in general inferior to copyright protection (or intellectual property) for the rights of users to access software jhrose_e16_free, objectively I consider the Commission has performed a first-class job in preparing this proposal (and in protecting the interests of the E.U. market) jhrose_e16_gen. The E.U. proposal seems more stringent than the U.S. approach. In particular, article 2 of the E.U. proposal requires a successful patent claim to involve a novel technical contribution that is not obvious to a person skilled in the art. This, perhaps, should afford macro-level protection to Free software "as such" (since all Free software is obvious).

European legislation

It is a fact that software patents exist, so people who develop Free software need to be able to operate alongside them in confidence. In jhrose_e16_free the E.U. patent offices are asked to actively involve Free software in their operations. There are currently moves to formally recognise Free software, or even draft further legislation. In any event, it remains the case that patents and copyright co-exist on a level playing field within E.U. law and that Free software developers be able to enjoy equal rights to protection as patent holders and proprietary authors.

E.U. Funding

The E.U. is actively seeking to fund Free Software projects, as part of the 6th framework programme for continual drive for research and technology development (2002-2006). This drive is working in partnership with FSF-Europe. Moreover, FSF-Europe is actively engaged in pursuing Free Software projects onto the central stage of the E.C.

Directions

market

A case for marketing Free software is easily made, often for cost associated reasons. For example, many public organisations or government offices cannot afford expensive licensing fees for software. This is where the open source movement targets, to promote low-initial software cost; and is comparable with times past, when computer hardware was significantly expensive and software, operating systems and utilities, were given away for free. Nowadays hardware is relatively cheap and it is proprietary software licenses which are costly. Open source and Free software licensing look to return the low software cost and instead divert computer system costs into support, maintenance and services.

research

As part of my current project, dspVM, I am also currently interested in Free software research and Free software science (in particular the application of concurrency and time theories). University research is largely funded and carried out to attract corporate sponsors, and articles are peer-reviewed by a small number of people prior to publication. It would be interesting to see if copyleft extends to Free research articles, combining author copyright together with reader license to copy, modify and re-distribute theories and investigations. In this, perhaps Free software research would attract a wide peer review process and lead to software science of wider public interest. Free software papers can be distributed using the GNU Free Documentation License.

Links

link
notes
Free Software Foundation The site for Free Software. See also FSF Europe and GNU links. For publishing Free software research papers, see the Free Documentation License.
Open Source Initiative The open source group looks to promote a marketplace for Free software. SourceForge is the main recognised site for open source projects SourceForge. The FSF has its own Free software project server GNU Savannah. Many projects are hosted on their own independent sites, for example my dspVM.
Free Operating Systems GNU/Linux is the most widely used Free software operating system. See also FreeBSD, which evolution predates Linux. Notwithstanding the popularity of these two there are many Free operating systems, for example Open Source O/S
Free software consortium The FSC is currently working on Draft Free software legislation


Copyright (C) 2002-2003, Julian Rose, Sussex U.K. smtp.user=jhrose smtp.domain=dial.pipex.com