TCS - It Depends On What You Mean By “Free”...
It Depends On What You Mean By “Free”...
by Trevor Gosbell
Melbourne PC User Group
Reprinted from the September 2003 issue of PC Update,
the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
From the October, 2004 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter
Everyone loves getting something for free. And with software licenses being the
way they are these days, "free software" sounds pretty attractive.
The trouble is that the word "free" is somewhat problematic - Merriam-Webster
http://www.m-w.com has 15 primary definitions for the adjective "free" and you
need to read down to the tenth before you get to "not costing or charging
anything". What's more the term "free software" actually has a specific
definition that has nothing to do with money.
So maybe we should start there.
Free Speech:Free software
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) defines free software saying that it "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"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html. It's all about freedom. Specifically
the FSF definition says that the user has the freedom to run the software for
any purpose, modify the software, and redistribute copies of the software (both
the original and modified versions). For a program to meet these criteria, and
be called "free software", the source code must be made available to the public.
Open Source Software
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) also has an official definition for the related
but not identical concept of "open source software" (OSS). As the name suggests,
OSS also requires that the source code must be publicly available. The OSS
definition http://opensource.org/docs/definition.php also requires that open
source software may be freely redistributed with no restriction on who may use
it or for what purpose. Users may make modifications, but authors may also
maintain the integrity and identity of their original work. The definition also
prevents specific technologies and various license "traps" from closing up
access to the software and source code.
Not Quite the Same Thing
By these definitions, free software and OSS sound almost identical - in fact at
the practical level they often are. People from both camps do collaborate on
projects, and any software that is licensed under the Free Software Foundation's
General Public License (GPL) is automatically both free software and open source
software. Despite this, the FSF prefers the term "free software" to "open source
software".
The differences underlying the two groups (and their definitions) are
philosophical. The OSI is the pragmatic school, for whom non-free software is a
suboptimal solution. The Free Software Foundation is the home of ethicists who
say that "non-free software is a social problem and free software is the
solution" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html. The FSF
is fundamentally opposed to proprietary software.
Philosophical argument aside, both FSF and OSI are not against charging people
for software; indeed the FSF was established on funds from the sale of tapes of
the Emacs editor. So "giving away" software for no monetary charge is not a part
of free software. The trouble is that people confuse freedom with getting
something for free - the confusion of free speech with free beer.
Free Beer:Public Domain
Software that is released to the public domain has no copyright restriction and
therefore is free to be used by anyone without any type of licensing burden.
That's sounds very close to free software, but it's not. In the first place,
public domain software may be released without the source code (although there's
nothing to stop a reverse engineering effort, the source isn't freely
available). And even if the source code is released it may be modified and
included into non-free software, which goes against the continuity of freedom
that the FSF definition requires.
Freeware
Despite being a fairly common term there appears to be no clear definition of
"freeware". It generally seems to cover a range of software types for which no
(direct) charge is made, including downloadable demonstration programs,
proprietary utilities and plug-ins (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader and Macromedia
Flash plug-in, respectively), and "lite" versions that come packaged with
hardware. Sometimes freeware is only free of charge for non-commercial use.
Of course, the true cost of freeware is often hidden as software companies
subsidise free give-aways by consolidating their position in other more
lucrative markets; this is exactly what Adobe and Macromedia do with their free
downloads. And why else would Microsoft give away a complex application like
Internet Explorer?
So freeware is not the same as free software.
Shareware and Crippleware
Of course shareware is not free software either - the shareware owners exert
their proprietary rights in asking for payment. There is no restriction on
obtaining and trying shareware but the user is limited to the trial period
(maybe by date or number of trials) before being required to pay a licensing fee
for ongoing use of the software. Instead of being time-limited, shareware is
sometimes limited by function - crippled - to encourage users to pay their
license fees. So-called crippleware lets the user try all of the features
offered by the program, except for one critical feature such as saving or
printing.
Abandonware
When proprietary software is no longer being distributed or supported by the
copyright owner, it may become known as abandonware. If we ignore that Windows
is an ongoing product, we could say that Windows 95 has been abandonware for
well over a year, Windows NT4 has just been abandoned, and Windows 98 will join
them early next year http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycleconsumer.mspx.
However, superseded versions of a currently available product are not usually
considered abandonware.
Often it is old games that are the most sought after abandonware. Let's face it,
who wants to go back to VisiCalc? (Well, if you must:
http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm). People who want to recapture
the lost delights of Pac-Man, Prince of Persia, or Pong look for them as
abandonware.
Athough some copyright owners have released their old software to the public
domain or as free software (see http://legalaw.cjb.net/), most abandonware is
still subject to copyright and isn't legal for unlicensed redistribution. This
seems a bit sad. There is no monetary market for such software now, merely a
bunch of ageing nerds looking for a nostalgia kick.
Free-for-All
So there are several ways to think about the "free-ness" of software, and some
aren't immediately obvious. The subtle distinction between free software and
open source software doesn't help the situation, and the confusion between
freeware and free software is practically inevitable. It all depends on what you
mean by free.
Now, did someone mention free beer?
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Copyright © 2004, Melbourne PC User Group Inc and individual authors.
Except where otherwise stated, all material is the copyright of the author.
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Don Singleton, President