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Everything that is really
great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
-Albert Einstein, ‘Out of My Later Years,’ 1950
Einstein’s quote explains,
in very simple terms, why FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) is a good
thing. In other words, Einstein simply states the obvious that humans operate
best when they are free. It opens up their thoughts and creativity flows freely.
This feature intends to
give the reader an insight into the FLOSS world. The first article will delve a
little deeper into the workings of the FLOSS Community. An indepth look at the
events that led to the current state of affairs is available online. It is
certainly an interesting read if you are curious to know how Linux and other
FLOSS applications came to be about.
History of FLOSS
The history of FLOSS is
quite colorful. While an in depth look at it is beyond the scope of this piece,
big names like AT&T, GE & MIT as well as several operating systems like
Multics, Unix, GNU & Linux are predominantly the reason why we have FLOSS
today. In a nutshell, Multics, an Operating System for PDP-7 computers became
extinct. Shattered by the loss of Multics, some people decided to write another
called Unics, later called Unix. Then there were some wars by the different
people who sold Unix, long story there. Let’s just say that a lot of people did
their bit to create free stuff and Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel to use it all.
Voila! We have Linux. The rest is history.
Definition of Free
We generally accept "Free" as something that comes to us at no cost.But in English, there are two definitions of "Free"
- Free as in Free food, Free beer, Free materials as in "NO COST"
- Free as in Free Speech as in Free to express
your opinions or thoughts
FLOSS refers to the second
kind of Free. It does not mean that free software cannot be sold. Some
companies do charge you for it, for example Red Hat & Novell charge you for
their distribution of Linux.
How is it free?
The closed
source or commercial software that is available in the market is only licensed
to you. Remember that long “End User License Agreement (EULA)” that you have to
“Agree” to before using it? If you read it carefully, you will notice that you
can only use the software according to those terms and conditions. You do not
own it, you have no rights to change it etc. This is where free software is
different. Free software comes under different licenses such as GNU General
Public License (GPL), BSD License, Apache License and so on. Almost all of them
allow you to freely distribute the source and binaries as long as the license
is included in the distribution. It also allows you to charge for the
distribution, again keeping the license intact. Some licenses require you to
contribute back to the community if you develop something new and use it commercially
and so on and so forth.
Does Free make sense?
All of us
know somebody who has pirated copies of everything that they need, right from
the OS, you know which one, all the way to design software for engineering and
web designs. The companies that developed these software have been trying hard
to clamp down on the pirates and unlicensed users. Quite a lot of the Small and
Medium Enterprises have been getting a friendly reminder about the licensing
policies. Of course, you have seen the latest ads in print. If commercial
software developers like Microsoft just gave their software free of charge,
they would not spend all that money trying to track down illegal users, would
they? Ever wonder how much effort is spent writing code that tries to find out
if the licensing policies have been adhered to?
Free
software makes sense in more ways than one. Consider this:
-
You don’t
have to worry about licensing issues. It is FREE anyways.
-
You don’t
have to keep track of who installed the software on which computer.
-
You do not
spend money on sending mails to those who you think have infringed on the
licensing issues. In the bargain, save a free trees.
-
You do not
have to keep your code secret, preventing some of the best minds to review the
quality.
-
You can
easily get the best developers for practically nothing.
- Your users
will actually love you and your software.
Next issue: Open Source Vs FLOSS. And why many of us think they are one and the same
Venkat
Mangudi is an Open Source Evangelist and Strategy Consultant based in
Bangalore. After having worked across Europe, Asia and the US, Venkat returned
home to set up a consulting firm called quite unimaginatively, Venkat Mangudi
Consulting www.venkatmangudi.com. He
can be reached at
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Issue BG82 Jan08
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