Free software

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Revision as of 22:06, 19 November 2020 by Moult (talk | contribs)

The term "free software" is a concept that originated with the invent of software development in the 1950s and persists until today. The term "free software" does not refer to price but instead refers to the concept of "freedom" of the user. Historically, in the 1950s, all software provided freedom to users to use software as they wished and this was considered normal. Starting in the 1970s, people started to consider non-free, closed, or proprietary software as normal. These proprietary software sacrifice user freedom and empowerment, and instead prioritise the benefits of software vendors at the expense of the users.

In the past decade, free software has returned to be considered normal and fundamental to how the software industry operates. The computer graphics industry is also currently returning towards free software. Unfortunately, the architecture, engineering, and construction industry is still very much behind, and the users have forgotten the concept of free software, leading to many misconceptions, mistrust, and the current status of the industry, where the digital maturity of users are restricted by vendors.

The opposite of free software is proprietary, non-free, or closed software. It is a goal of OSArch to make proprietary software the exception in AEC, not the norm.

The OSArch criteria for free software

A strict definition for free software is followed. Specifically, the Free Software Foundation defines four freedoms that a software must provide.

  • Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
  • Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
  • Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbour.
  • Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Therefore, the primary criteria as to whether a software is free, is whether or not the software is licensed under a free software license. The FSF maintains a list of free software licenses that we use as a reference. If the license is not declared as a free software license, OSArch does not support it.

One of the conditions of providing freedom to the users is to also make the software open source. However, making software open source is only one of the conditions. If a software is open source, but not free, then OSArch does not support it. For this reason, we refer to the free software foundation's list of licenses as the standard.

Sometimes, free software and proprietary software are mixed together. This can lead to four combinations:

  1. Purely free software, where no proprietary software is required
  2. Proprietary software which extends or depends on free software as its foundation
  3. Free software which extends or depends on proprietary software as its foundation
  4. Purely proprietary software, with methods of using open data standards to interoperate with free software

Misconceptions about free software

Does free software mean non commercial and non paid?

Is free software only used by hobbyists and unfit for commercial work?

A common misconception is that free software is about price.

The opposite of free software is closed, non-free, or proprietary software. You will notice that free software can still be commercial or paid. A software is considered free if it provides the user freedom, as opposed to restricting the user.

Is free software and open source the same?

https://opensource.org/faq#free-software

Further reading

Read about Free Software on Wikipedia. Read about Open Source Software on Wikipedia.

"Free as in freedom, not free beer"

Free Software is necessarily Open Source, but not all Open Source software gives you freedom.