The free software community is an informal term that refers to the users and developers of free software Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer- as well as supporters of the free software movement The free software movement is a social movement which aims to enable users to access and modify software free of cost. The alternative terms "software libre", "open source", and "FOSS" are associated with the free software movement. Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker.^[1] Much to the dismay of some free software community members the movement is sometimes referred to Alternative terms for free software have been a controversial issue among free software users from the late 1990s onwards. Coined in 1983 by Richard Stallman, "free software" is used to describe software which can be used, modified, and redistributed with little or no restriction. These freedoms are formally described in The Free as the open-source software Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software. Open source licenses often meet the requirements of the Open Source community.^[2] The Linux community is a subset of the free software community.

History

When the free software movement The free software movement is a social movement which aims to enable users to access and modify software free of cost. The alternative terms "software libre", "open source", and "FOSS" are associated with the free software movement. Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker began in 1983, the community of users was mostly academics and computer programmers.

In the late 1990s, as free software became easier to use, many companies became users, distributors, and developers of free software.

Communication structure

Most communication is done over the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and via mailing lists A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the list", wikis and forums, and some is done at conferences. This can also be seen in the widespread use of the collaborative software development model.

Well known websites which the free software community participate in are Slashdot Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section attached to it. Slashdot was founded in 1997 as a, LWN, and Newsforge SourceForge, Inc. , formerly VA Software Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and VA Research, is the provider of the SourceForge Development Intelligence application. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, although these are not exclusively used by the free software community.

Conferences include GUADEC, aKademy While Akademy usually takes place in late summer or early autumn and is always held in Europe, Camp KDE, another annual contributor's conference of the KDE community, is held each January on the American continent, FOSDEM FOSDEM is a European event centered around Free and Open Source software development. It is aimed at developers and all interested in the Free and Open Source news in the world. Its goals are to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open source software, FISL, LinuxTag, linux.conf.au and LinuxWorld Conference and Expo LinuxWorld Conference and Expo is a conference and trade show that focuses on open source and Linux solutions in the information technology sector.

Recognisable characteristics

Some values which are nearly universal--as universal as values can be in a community of millions--are the preference for public discussion of technical matters, and opposition to software patents Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition. One definition suggested by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is that a software patent is a "patent on any performance of a computer realised by means of a computer program".[a 1] and parts of the DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to. See software patents and free software Opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem.

Disagreements

Some arguments take on the fervor of "religious wars", such as the technical disputes from the 80s and early 90s over which text editor is better Editor war is the common name for the rivalry between users of the vi and Emacs text editors. The rivalry has become a lasting part of hacker culture and the free software community, Emacs Emacs is a class of feature-rich text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. Emacs has, perhaps, more editing commands than other editors, numbering over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work or Vi/Vim Vim is a text editor released by Bram Moolenaar in 1991 for the Amiga computer. The name "Vim" is an acronym for "Vi IMproved" because Vim was created as an extended version of the vi editor, with many additional features designed to be helpful in editing program source code, or even what version of a text editor is superior, GNU Emacs Emacs is a class of feature-rich text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. Emacs has, perhaps, more editing commands than other editors, numbering over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work vs XEmacs XEmacs is a graphical- and console-based text editor which runs on almost any Unix-like operating system as well as Microsoft Windows. XEmacs is a fork, developed based on a version of GNU Emacs from the late 1980s. Any user can download, use, and modify XEmacs as free software available under the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later.

Other conflicts exist over naming. These can occur because of differing opinions on historical accuracy, philosophical background or credit, such as the alternative terms for free software Alternative terms for free software have been a controversial issue among free software users from the late 1990s onwards. Coined in 1983 by Richard Stallman, "free software" is used to describe software which can be used, modified, and redistributed with little or no restriction. These freedoms are formally described in The Free and the GNU/Linux naming controversy The GNU/Linux naming controversy is a dispute among members of the free and open source software community over how to refer to the computer operating system commonly called Linux. And they can be caused by a conflict of business models and the use of trademarks, as is the case for the Naming conflict between Debian and Mozilla.

Companies entering the community

With the success of free software such as Linux Linux refers to the family of Unix-like computer operating systems using the Linux kernel. Linux can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from mobile phones, tablet computers and video game consoles, to mainframes and supercomputers. Linux is predominantly known for its use in servers; in 2009 it held a server market share, Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million web site milestone. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (, Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. A Net Applications statistic put Firefox at 24.59% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of April 2010[update], making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide after Microsoft's, and OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source software application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format for data interchange as its default file format, as well as, many companies have begun interacting with the free software community. Difficulties include the choice of free software licences A free software licence is a software licence which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law. A free software licence grants, to the recipients, freedoms in the form of permissions to modify or distribute copyrighted work, and the selection of what software will be released as free software.

An example of a relatively successful entry to the free software community is Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle Corporation, selling computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982. The company was headquartered in Santa Clara, California , on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center' July 19, 2000 release of the Star Office source code under the GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License. The GNU Library General Public License (as the LGPL was and the successive development of OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source software application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is distributed as free software and written using its own GUI toolkit. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format for data interchange as its default file format, as well as on this foundation.^[3] This move was warmly received by the community since it did not have a mature office suite at the time. Sun's use of the community's preferred licence was also welcome, because it allowed source code In computer science, source code is any collection of statements or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language. Source code is the means most often used by programmers to specify the actions to be performed by a computer to be shared with other projects.

An example of a more difficult entry was that of Real Networks RealNetworks is a provider of Internet media delivery software and services based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The company is best known for the creation of RealAudio, a compressed audio format, RealVideo, a compressed video format and RealPlayer, a media player. The company is also known for its subscription-based online entertainment. Real Networks wrote their own licence, and released only parts of their software suite. Most notably, the codec A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of 'compressor-decompressor' or, more commonly, 'coder-decoder'—the software needed to view Real Video RealVideo is a proprietary video format developed by RealNetworks. It was first released in 1997 and as of 2008[update] is at version 10. RealVideo is supported on many platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and several mobile phones files—was not released.

See also

• Free software movement The free software movement is a social movement which aims to enable users to access and modify software free of cost. The alternative terms "software libre", "open source", and "FOSS" are associated with the free software movement. Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker
• International Free Software Congress
• Wikipedia community
• Linux User Group A Linux User Group or Linux Users' Group is a private, generally non-profit or not-for-profit organization that provides support and/or education for Linux users, particularly for inexperienced users. The term commonly refers to local groups that meet in person, but is also used to refer to online support groups that may have members spread over a

References

1. ^ Some examples showing that, and how, "free software community" is used:
   • "Building a free software community in a PC Garage". Linux.com. http://www.linux.com/articles/55205.
   • "Big challenges for the Free Software Community". Mark Shuttleworth. http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/62. "The “character” I like most about the free software community is that it is not afraid of setting itself audacious goals..."
   • "Sun 'distorts' definition of free software". ZDnet. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39206659,00.htm. "Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz has angered some in the free software community by appearing to misrepresent what open source is."
   • "The Free Software Community After 20 Years: With great but incomplete success, what now?". Free Software Foundation. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/use-free-software.html.
   • "Debian Social Contract". Debian. http://www.debian.org/social_contract. "The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) ... has been adopted by the free software community"
   • "Message to the Linux and Free Software Community Regarding the SCO Denial-of-Service Virus". Bruce Perens. http://perens.com/SCO/DOS/.
   • "Let's reward corporations that embrace Free Software". Libervis. http://www.libervis.com/article/lets_reward_corporations_that_embrace_free_software. "The Free Software community is without a doubt today an important part of the overall IT business ecosystem..."
2. ^ Example of the FS and OS terms being interchangeable:
   • "Announcement: "Free software" instead of "open source"!". Libervis. http://www.libervis.com/article/announcement_free_software_instead_of_open_source. "This site is about building a stronger community around free software movement and open source movement ... Both movements form the same community..."
3. ^ OpenOffice.org FAQ

External links

• The Free Software Community After 20 Years, by Richard Stallman
• International Workshop on Emerging Trends in FLOSS Research and Development, 21 May 2007 - joined with ICSE 2007
• Debian related free software surveys

Categories: Free software culture and documents | Types of communities

See Also:

• Free Software: Encyclopedia
• Free Software Movement: Encyclopedia
• Computers: Software: Freeware: Directory
• Computers: Software: Freeware: System: Directory
• Computers: Software: Freeware: Mac OS: Directory

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