Free Software Foundation (FSF)
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is an organization that advocates for free software, and the creator of the GNU’s Not Unix (GNU) project.
- founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman
Philosophy
Free software is defined as the freedom to do things you want to do with the software, not the price of the software.
- i.e. “free as in speech, not free as in beer”
- freeware refers to software that is free of charge, but not necessarily free to do what you want with
4 Software Freedoms
FSF defines four specific software freedoms:
- Freedom to use the software for any purpose
- Freedom to examine the source code and modify it as you see fit
- Freedom to redistribute the software
- Freedom to redistribute your modified software