What is free software?

El FOSS (in English free software, although this name is also sometimes confused with "free" due to the ambiguity of the term "free" in the English language, which is why "free software" is also used) is the name of the software that respects the freedom of users about their purchased product and, therefore, once obtained it can be used, copied, studied, modified, and redistributed freely.

According to the Free Software Foundation, free software refers to the freedom of users to run, copy, distribute, study, modify software, and distribute modified software.

A software is considered free if it meets the following conditions:

• The program can be used for any purpose
• It is possible to access its source code
• It is possible to make copies of the program
• Improvements can be published

Something important to highlight is that free software is based on existing intellectual property laws and provides greater freedoms, if one meets certain conditions. In other words, it allows the modification and redistribution of software, something that is generally prohibited in what is known as “proprietary software”, as long as one complies with the condition of making those modifications available to the rest of the world. It is based on the fact that if we all share, we will all be better.

Within free software there are several types of licenses:

• GPL, one of the best known licenses was created by the GNU project.
• LGPL, similar to the GPL, but the difference is in the scope it has
• Creative Commons: it is actually a name that encompasses many types of licenses that are generally applied to creative content, such as graphics, texts or music. Some of these licenses are considered free.

There is also Open Software, whose main exponent is the BSD license. Open software allows the redistribution of code and software, without any kind of discrimination, but does not guarantee that the source code of the same can always be accessed. The latter is the main difference with free software.

What is considered proprietary software?

Proprietary software is so called because by using it one deprives oneself of rights that one would naturally have. The proprietary software is accompanied by an end-use license agreement, or EULA for its acronym in English. This license limits your use of the software in various ways. The main one is that it generally prohibits modifying the program and limits what I can do with the program.

An example of this is hardware controllers, whose license only allows them to be used with specific hardware in particular, and with a specific operating system.

We see the typical installation of a proprietary program. This is not the exact order, but the steps are more or less as follows:

• One runs the installer (usually by double clicking on the .exe file)
• A welcome message appears
• You are asked to agree to a license
• You are asked to choose the folder where you are going to install it
• You are asked to confirm
• The corresponding files are installed
• Installation is finished

The point of difference between free software and proprietary software is in the license that one accepts at point c. The contract of a program is the one that indicates whether it is a free or proprietary program. Also, within the proprietary programs there are several categories:

• Payments: software for which the user must pay an amount to acquire them and be able to use them legally. In some cases, the right of use is limited in time and must be paid again in order to continue using it.
• Demos / Shareware: Examples of this type of program are Winzip or Winrar. In these programs, their functionality is limited to a certain number of days.
• Free: These can be downloaded for free from the internet and can be used without any limitation, although there is generally a paid version of it that has more features. An example of these is Winamp.

Generally, Proprietary Software is also known under the name of Closed Software or Proprietary Software. Privative is a more appropriate name because, as we saw, it deprives us of rights.

Main Advantages of Free Software over Private Software

To illustrate these advantages, let's take an example of something we all use today, cell phones. Generally, one acquires a cell phone by buying it from a company that is not the manufacturer of the cell phone, but rather the provider of the telephone service.

The company sells you the cell phone with an "end-use license", which puts some conditions on you, such as the minimum term you have to maintain the phone service and the functions you can use with that cell phone. It is blocked from doing things that that company does not want you to do with your cell phone, or for which it wants to charge you an extra.

Until recently, they even charged an extra fee to give you the code that allowed you to change companies, even when the minimum term had already expired.
That is, they deprive you of doing things with YOUR cell phone, which the device can do, but the company puts artificial restrictions to charge you as an extra service, or sell you a more expensive device. And they even force you to change your cell phone or throw it away and buy another when they no longer want to maintain the service for a type of cell phone that companies consider obsolete, as happened with bricks.
And then you have the phone manufacturers, who charge you for the software to connect to the cell phone, or for the slightest accessory, as is the case with a very popular cell phone these days. And the warranty expires as soon as you touch a screw, or they try to charge you for changing the battery.

On the other hand, you have a free cell phone. Cell phone plans are free, so there are people who can contribute to solve problems that occur in particular cases, such as using the cell phone in the middle of the forest in Patagonia, something that a normal manufacturer would not pay much attention to since it is not precisely your niche.

And you can install the programs and games you want by connecting them to your computer with the software that someone developed for a personal organizer and another person modified so that it also runs with this cell phone. You can also use it for something that the manufacturer or the company thought at the time, such as a cell phone with a camera that sends photos every x seconds and allows you to hold a pseudo teleconference over a normal network, without paying an extra for the service. Or change all the software completely for the same one you use on your computer and customize it to your liking, not with the options that the portal of this or that telephone company gives you. And if you don't like that telephone company, you can change whenever you want from one to another, and even use several at the same time, according to the type of call, message or thing you want to do. In other words, the cell phone does what you want and not the other way around.

Free software tries to give you back rights that should never have been taken from you, and that you got used to not having. Free software believes that if we all share, we will all be better. It seems like a utopia, but it is something tangible; It is happening around you without you even realizing it.

Myths and Truths of Free Software vs. Closed or Private Software

• Free Software is made by amateurs, therefore it is of poorer quality than Private Software
  FALSE: as in all areas, the quality varies, but free software allows many people to review the code and propose improvements. This kind of scrutiny and review, in some cases by thousands of people, makes the quality of the software similar to or better than proprietary software. Even many of these people work in software companies on a stable basis.
• Free Software is Free
  FALSE: Free Software - Free Software in English, comes from "Free as in free speech, not as in free beer", whose translation is: "Free as in freedom of expression, not as in free beer." This is a disquisition that perhaps makes more sense to those who speak English, especially because of the ambiguity of the word "free." However, most of the free software is free. Even when it is paid, once the software license has been purchased, it can be freely copied, if the license conditions are met.
• In Free Software nobody makes money
  FALSE: Otherwise, how would the purchase of some Free Software companies be justified, such as MySql, for example, recently acquired by Sun Microsystems? There are also companies that create Free Software in our country and generate income since what is marketed is not the program itself, but the support and custom development services.

Licensing

A license is an agreement by which the author of a software authorizes a user to exercise "legal acts of exploitation". Among the free licenses, the best known are:

• GPL licenses
• BSD licenses
• MPL and derivative licenses

Under the GPL (GNU General Public License) the author retains ownership rights and permits redistribution and modification under terms designed to ensure that all modified versions of the software remain under the more restrictive terms of the GNU GPL itself.

Approximately 60% of the software licensed as Free Software uses a GPL license. A restriction of this license: redistributed modified versions whose original version is under the GPL license, must also be licensed under the GPL. That is, the source code must be kept open to whoever wants to read and / or modify it, it should not be closed. In the event of the latter, the license will be breached.

The BSD license is the software license granted primarily for BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) systems. It belongs to the Open Software licensing group and the main difference from the GPL is that it has fewer restrictions. A feature of the BSD license is that it allows the use of the source code in Closed Software, contrary to the GPL.

The MPL license (Mozilla Public License in Spanish or Mozilla Public License in English) is an open source and Free Software license. It was developed by Netscape Communications Corporation, to release Netscape Communicator 4.0, which later became the well-known and popular Mozilla project. The MPL license fully complies with the definition of open source software and with the four freedoms of Free Software. However, the MPL leaves open the way to a possible non-free reuse of the software without restricting the reuse of the code or re-licensing under the same license.

Currently there is a foundation, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which is the entity that indicates whether a license is free or not. To see all free licenses, see: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html