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Good to know: Freeware is not Free Software

Written by Ayesha .A on . Posted in Reviews, Software

You will be interested to note that; you can purchase a Free software! That is to say Free Software may not be free and might come with a huge price Tag! Then why is it called Free? And what is freeware then? Are freeware not Free softwares? The literature on internet uses both terms extensively, mostly interchangeably, confusing their real meanings. I have especially written this post to clear this dust and enlighten you about both the terms in detail.

First and foremost, freeware is not Free software.

What is Freeware?
Freeware are software that are commercially free. That is, you don’t need to spend money to use the software. Technically, Freeware does not require the payment of any license fee for the use of the software. Today there are millions of software that you can freely download and use. All of these software are called freeware.

What about the source code?
Freewares, typically are provided under license which restrict user’s access to source code. This means user cannot customize software or view/change/study the source code.
You might have come across two versions of the same software, one pro version and the other free version. The free version usually has limited features when compared to the paid pro version: but you can download and use the free version for life time without paying any fee. Such types of software are also included in freeware category. Software that are free to use for first (say) 20 times are also loosely categorized as freeware too. Software that are free to use but contain ads are also freeware.
According to Wikipedia “the software license may impose additional restrictions on the type of use including personal use, private use, individual use, non-profit use, non-commercial use, academic use, educational use, use in charity or humanitarian organizations, non-military use, use by public authorities or various other combinations of these type of restrictions”.

Examples of freeware
Commercial organizations such as Microsoft have also launched some freeware like MS Visual Basic Express Edition, Microsoft Accounting Express 2009 and Sync Toy. Other popular freeware are AVG Antivirus, Skype and the list continues.

Now meet the real hero, the..

Free Software: What is Free Software?
Free software, the term is used and is defined by Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org). Free software means that users can freely run, copy, distribute, study and change the software. Look deeper:

The Price?
Free software may be free of cost or it may cost you some amount. That depends. However, no matter how you got the free software ( purchased it, or it was free);  with free software you always get the FREEdom to copy, change and distribute the software your way. The FSF further elaborates the concept in these words: “Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.

The source code ( and the freedom you get)
For any software to be called as Free software, source code SHOULD be available. As FSF defines, with a Free software you get 4 freedoms: (see complete document):

1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this).
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.( Access to the source code is a precondition for this).

FSF in their definition of Free software, state it clearly that “In order for freedoms (stated in clause 2 and 4-above i.e. the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish improved versions) to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore the Accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software. It must also be noted that FSF treats Obfuscated “source code” ‘not real source code’.

Commercial Free Software
A Free software can be commercial, for that the program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. That is, you might confront to a situation where you will pay to get a copy of Free software. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software. Today commercial development of Free software is usual practice.

Examples of Free Software
All the products of Mozilla, including Firefox, Thunderbird etc. And software distributed under GNU Public  License.

So by now you must understand that not all Free Software are free of cost and Free software is not freeware! Do not use them interchangeably!

For questions please refer to our Q/A forum at : http://ask.unixmen.com

Related posts:

  1. Liberating non-free software with Linux-libre
  2. Open-Source Software Licenses
  3. Airtime Sourcefabric: Free Open Source Radio Automation Software
  4. Free and Open-Source Software bring an Open-Community
  5. Canonical abandons ShipIt program! NO MORE FREE CDs

5 Comment(s)

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pigmej

|

Just one thing:

What about pep8 in your python code ? How can you give ‘tutorials’ on quite popular website, of such a bad quality ?

Amit Rai

|

I just renamed shared.xml and it logged in and created a new shared.xml.

DB Griffin

|

Larry Page is not being completely honest! The manner in which the PRISM program/project works does not need access from company administrators or owners, so called “direct access”; the access to the information is already there. These tech company CEOs take for granted the actual intelligence of most end users of their products. All it takes is a little digging and reading to go from ignorant to informed on these things especially on exactly how the internet works/functions in the U.S.A. I find Larry Page’s remarks just as laughable as Al Gore’s claim to “inventing” the internet/world wide web!

If you, as an end user, are reading this post; I challenge you to research these matters yourself. It really is quite simple with all the “information sites” that exist on the web today ie Wikipedia, & other online encyclopedias that actually list source material, as well as highly respected tech sites and blogs that also list their source material. Be warned: this is only the tip of the iceberg and these tech CEOs know and understand this; they are scrambling in attempt to perform DAMAGE CONTROL to save the company and what little trust thay have left from their products end users/consumers.

Am I a skeptic? I believe someone has to be or needs to be at this point in time! If your not just a little skeptical of the government, tech companies, and the people that are in charge of these agencies and companies; you need to be, even if just a little skeptic. For your own personal protection and security! I know I was a part of this community for over 14 years!

Anders Jackson

|

As I understand it so do VLC use same encoders as ffmpeg. And yes, there are less code that can break when you use command line instead of a graphical UI.

And may I ask what mono has to do with VLC? *facepalm*

Anders Jackson

|

Just some thoughts about Java.

OpenJDK7 are now THE Java implementation and Oracles are just one more of the reimplementations. So you should not need to install Oracles version.

And you really don’t need to remove the OpenJDK7 installation to also have Sun Java JDK 7. Just run

sudo update-java-alternatives –list

and select which java you want to have as default java of all that is installed.

And if you want to run a program with one special version, check manpage for java-wrappers how to do that.

man java-wrappers

so you can run java program rasterizer like this:

JAVA_FLAVOR=openjdk rasterizer
JAVA_ARGS=-Xmx80m rasterizer

JAVA_BINDIR=/usr/share/

etc

 

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