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Fredericton

Fredericton is the capital city of the Canadian province of New Brunswick. The city is situated in the west-central portion of the province along the Saint John River, also known by its Indigenous name of Wolastoq, which flows west to east as it bisects the city. The river is the dominant natural feature of the area. One of the main urban centres in New Brunswick, the city had a population of 63,116 and a metropolitan population of 108,610 in the 2021 Canadian census. It is the third-largest city in the province after Moncton and Saint John.

On 1 January 2023, Fredericton annexed parts of five local service districts; revised census figures have not been released.

An important cultural, artistic, and educational centre for the province, Fredericton is home to two universities, The University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University, the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, New Brunswick Community College and cultural institutions such as the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Fredericton Region Museum, and The Playhouse, a performing arts venue. The city hosts the annual Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival, attracting regional and international jazz, blues, rock, and world artists. The city also hosts the Garrison Night Market through the summer months which showcases many local vendors and artists and musicians. Fredericton is also an important and vibrant centre point for the region's top visual artists; many of New Brunswick's notable artists live and work there today. Fredericton has also been home to some great historical Canadian painters as well, including Goodridge Roberts, and Molly and Bruno Bobak.

As a provincial capital, its economy is tied to the public sector; however, the city also contains a growing IT and commercial sector. The city has the highest percentage of residents with post-secondary education in the province and the highest per capita income of any city in New Brunswick.

History
There is archaeological evidence of a camp in the area 12,000 years ago, and the Wolastoqiyik farmed several kilometres upriver.

Colonists from the Kingdom of France in the late 1600s built Fort Nashwaak on the north side of the Saint John River, as the capital of Acadia. It withstood a British attack in 1696, but the capital was later moved to Port Royal (Annapolis Royal). In 1713, Acadians escaping the British takeover of Nova Scotia settled the site, naming it Pointe Ste-Anne. It was destroyed in 1758 when the population of about 83 were exiled during the expulsion of the Acadians.

It was in 1783, when United Empire Loyalists arrived from New England, that the history of modern Fredericton began. The following year, New Brunswick was partitioned from Nova Scotia and became its own colony. Pointe-Ste-Anne was renamed "Fredericstown", after Frederick, second son of King George III. It became the capital of the new colony, being considered to have a better defensive position than larger Saint John.

The streets were laid out in the typical grid pattern of the time, with the names reflecting loyalist tendencies: Charlotte, Brunswick, George, King, and Queen.

In 1785, it became the shire town of York County. In 1790 the New Brunswick Legislative Building was constructed. As a centre of government, it attracted educational institutions, with King's College (now the University of New Brunswick) being the first English-language university in Canada, and religious institutions, with Christ Church Cathedral being built as the seat of the Anglican Diocese of Fredericton in 1853.

It was a British garrison town from 1784 to 1869, and the military compound is preserved as a National Historic Site of Canada.

With the New Brunswick Equal Opportunity program in the 1960s, county councils were abolished, and government services were centralized provincially in Fredericton, increasing jobs and population.

Geography
The Saint John River, also known as the Wolastoq, runs through Fredericton. The city's downtown core lies on the flat low-lying ground on either side of the river, with most of the city's post-war suburban development occurring on the gently sloping hills of the river valley.

At an altitude of about 17 m above sea level, Fredericton is nestled in the Pennsylvanian Basin. It differs markedly from the geologically older parts of the province. There are prominently two distinct areas in the region that are divided around the area of Wilsey Road, in the east end of the city. In the west side, the bedrock underneath the earth is topographically dominant, whereas the other is controlled by Pleistocene and recent deposits leading to the rivers (resulting in the area being shallow and wide). Fredericton and its surroundings are rich in water resources, which, coupled with highly arable soil, make the Fredericton region ideal for agriculture. The Saint John River and one of its major tributaries, the Nashwaak River, come together in Fredericton. The uninhabited parts of the city are heavily forested.

Climate
Fredericton has a warm-summer humid continental climate (Dfb under the Köppen climate classification system), with short, warm summers and long, cold winters. The city has high humidity and precipitation year-round; on average, Fredericton receives approximately 1100 mm of precipitation per year.

Demographics
In the 2021 Canadian census conducted by Statistics Canada, Fredericton had a population of 63,116 living in 28,478 of its 29,892 total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $58,721$. With a land area of 133.93 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

At the census metropolitan area (CMA) level in the 2021 census, the Fredericton CMA had a population of 108,610 living in 46,357 of its 48,761 total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of 102,690. With a land area of 6014.66 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

The 2021 census reported that immigrants (individuals born outside Canada) comprise 7,790 persons or 12.6% of the total population of Fredericton. Of the total immigrant population, the top countries of origin were United Kingdom (765 persons or 9.8%), China (645 persons or 8.3%), United States of America (570 persons or 7.3%), Syria (505 persons or 6.5%), Philippines (500 persons or 6.4%), India (460 persons or 5.9%), Egypt (300 persons or 3.9%), Iran (245 persons or 3.1%), Lebanon (205 persons or 2.6%), and Democratic Republic of the Congo (180 persons or 2.3%).

Ethnicity
In 2021, Fredericton was 82.5% white/European, 3.5% Indigenous and 14.0% visible minorities. The largest visible minority groups were Black (2.9%), South Asian (2.9%), Arab (2.5%), Chinese (1.8%) and Filipino (1.0%).

Fredericton accepted the highest number of refugees from the Syrian Civil War per capita of any Canadian city.

Language
English is spoken as a mother tongue by 80.2% of residents. Other mother tongues spoken are French (6.1%), Arabic (2.1%), Chinese languages (1.4%), Spanish (0.7%), Russian (0.6%), and Persian languages (0.5%). 1.4% of the population listed both English and French as mother tongues.

Religion
According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Fredericton included:
 * Christianity (32,295 persons or 52.2%)
 * Irreligion (25,150 persons or 40.7%)
 * Islam (2,305 persons or 3.7%)
 * Hinduism (820 persons or 1.3%)
 * Buddhism (225 persons or 0.4%)
 * Sikhism (190 persons or 0.3%)
 * Judaism (160 persons or 0.3%)
 * Indigenous Spirituality (15 persons or <0.1%)
 * Other (670 persons or 1.1%)

Those who declare a religion are predominantly Protestant. Fredericton has a synagogue, a mosque, a Hindu temple, a Unitarian fellowship, and a Shambhala Buddhist meditation centre.

Economy
The Government of New Brunswick and the universities are the primary employers. The policies of centralizing provincial government functions during the 1960s led to an expansion of the population.

The 1960s also saw an expansion of the University of New Brunswick due to increased post-war university enrolment, as well as the construction of Saint Thomas University. The Law School, now the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law moved from Saint John to the Fredericton area.

The city has been investing actively in IT infrastructure. The City of Fredericton won the "Judges Innovation Award" at the 2004 Canadian Information Productivity Awards due to their "Fred-eZone" free municipality wide Wi-Fi initiative. This and other innovations by the city's utelco, e-Novations, led Intel to do a case study on their successes. Fred-eZone spans much of the city's downtown and parts of surrounding residential areas, as well as peripheral commercial areas such as Fredericton's Regent Mall. In 2008 and 2009 the Intelligent Community Forum selected Fredericton as a Top 7 Intelligent Community, based partly on the city's work in the IT sector.

Arts and culture
The Playhouse is the main venue for Theatre New Brunswick, the province's largest professional theatre company.

Festivals include the Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival, the New Brunswick Summer Music Festival, the Silver Wave Film Festival, the Flourish Arts & Music Festival, and Symphony New Brunswick.

Fredericton has a long literary tradition, having been home to Jonathan Odell, Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Francis Sherman. Writers living in Fredericton include Raymond Fraser, Herb Curtis, David Adams Richards, Mark Anthony Jarman, and Gerard Beirne. Fredericton's beloved fountain "Freddy the Nude Dude", officially known as "Putto with Fish" sits outside City Hall at 397 Queen St. "Freddy the Nude Dude" was donated to the city by Mayor George Edward Fentey, in 1885. The statue depicts a nude Cherub and is a beloved fixture of downtown Fredericton. The famed statue has had some trouble since its historic arrival in 1885. In January 2013, "Freddy the Nude Dude" was taken south to Alabama for a replication of the original statue after 128 winters worth of damage. The original Freddy is kept safely inside City Hall where it is protected from further weather damage.

Architecture
Styles range from Victorian to modern. There are 12 National Historic Sites in the city, beyond the dozen National Historic People and two National Historic Events honored there.

Museums and historic buildings

 * Beaverbrook Art Gallery
 * New Brunswick Legislative Building
 * Old Government House
 * Fredericton Region Museum
 * Christ Church Cathedral
 * New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame
 * Science East
 * Sir Howard Douglas Hall (Old Arts Building)
 * William Brydone Jack Observatory
 * St. Anne's Chapel
 * Fort Nashwaak
 * Fredericton City Hall
 * Marysville Cotton Mill
 * Centennial Building

Sports
There are no professional sports teams in Fredericton, although both universities have extensive athletic programs. The UNB Reds play in the Atlantic University Sport conference of U Sports and St. Thomas Tommies play in the Atlantic Collegiate Athletic Association conference of the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association for most sports, although their women's hockey team, cross-country teams, and track & field teams play in the Atlantic University Sports conference of U Sports.

Fredericton's high schools compete in a variety of sports in the New Brunswick Interscholastic Athletic Association.

UNB's men's hockey team are 8 time National Champions, and the highest attended sporting events in the city.

The Junior A hockey team is the Fredericton Red Wings. The former Fredericton Express and Fredericton Canadiens were American Hockey League teams.

Each summer the Fredericton Loyalists host the New Brunswick Timber team which competes in the Rugby Canada Super League.

Parks and recreation

 * Carleton Park, part of the Northside Riverfront Trail, includes a boat launching area. The park was once the site of Alexander "Boss" Gibson's rail yard.
 * The Green, along the north and south banks of the Saint John River, a walking and biking trail.
 * Killarney Lake Park, a lakeside park with a beach and picnic spots as well as an extensive network of nature trails.
 * Odell Park features preserved forested areas, trails, spaces for picnics and gatherings, and the Fredericton Botanic Garden .st
 * Officers' Square is a venue for outdoor concerts and has an outdoor skating rink in the winter.
 * Queen Square Park, in the heart of Downtown Fredericton.
 * Reading Park is a 33 acre passive use park incorporating an open meadow, and a 1.1 km walking trail through an old-growth forest. The park's old-growth forest is one of the city's last remaining habitats for the pileated woodpecker.
 * Wilmot Park - a recreational park downtown.

Trail system
Fredericton has a network of 25 trails totaling more than 85 km on both sides of the Saint John and Nashwaak Rivers. Many of the city trails are rail trails that follow old railway lines. These include the Fredericton Railway Bridge that spans 0.6 km across the Saint John River. The rail trail system in Fredericton is part of the Sentier NB Trail system and some of these trails are also part of the larger Trans-Canada Trail network.

Government
Fredericton has a non-partisan and Mayor–council government. The mayor and council serve four-year terms with elections in May. The city is divided into 12 wards, six on each side of the river, with one councillor per ward.

The city includes the provincial ridings of Fredericton North, Fredericton-Grand Lake, Fredericton West-Hanwell, Oromocto-Lincoln-Fredericton, New Maryland-Sunbury and Fredericton South, which in 2014 elected the first-ever MLA for the Green Party of New Brunswick, party leader David Coon.

Federally, the city forms most of the riding of Fredericton.

Education and research
The Anglophone West School District and the District Scolaire Francophone Sud (District 1) run schools including Fredericton High School, École des Bâtisseurs, and the École Sainte-Anne. Leo Hayes High School is a public–private partnership

There are two universities, the University of New Brunswick, and St. Thomas, the province's only Catholic university.

Colleges include the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, the New Brunswick Community College, and the Maritime College of Forest Technology.

For-profit universities include University of Fredericton and Yorkville University.

The Hugh John Flemming Forestry Centre researches in forestry management. Fredericton's Provincial Research Organization specializes in aquaculture, mining, manufacturing, energy and the environment.

Transportation
Air service is provided out of the Fredericton International Airport.

Fredericton Transit provides bus service 7 days a week.

Fredericton started installing bicycle lanes in July 2008.

Passenger rail service ended in the 1960s, and freight in 1996. All railway tracks have been abandoned and removed.

Fredericton is served by the Maritime Bus fleet which provides connections to points throughout the Maritimes.

The Trans-Canada Highway passes along the southern municipal boundary. Routes 7 and 8 (the latter being a former alignment of the Trans-Canada) also pass through the city. Two highway bridges, the Westmorland Street Bridge and the Princess Margaret Bridge, cross the Saint John River. Those bridges feed into controlled-access roads (Routes 8 and 105 serving the city's north side).

title: Fredericton


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Talk:Famous Scotsmen

I just wanted to point out that Alexander Graham Bell's identification as a Scotsman is a bit of a vexed question. Granted, he was born in Scotland, but this was during a period when there was heavy immigration from there, and any number of children and young men grew to significance elsewhere after having been born there. Bell is one (as is the first Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald. Anyone have objections to a quick prelude on the parent page explain that we're using a fast and loose definition of the term "Scotsman"? (Come to think, thank god there's no famous Scotswomen here yet, or there'd be even more trouble). -- Paul Drye
 * Mary, Queen of ...?

 * Uh oh! -- Paul Drye

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Famous Scotsmen


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Free software

Free software, libre software, libreware or rarely known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users (not just the developer) ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

The right to study and modify a computer program entails that the source code—the preferred format for making changes—be made available to users of that program. While this is often called "access to source code" or "public availability", the Free Software Foundation (FSF) recommends against thinking in those terms, because it might give the impression that users have an obligation (as opposed to a right) to give non-users a copy of the program.

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past and other permissive software like the Berkeley Software Distribution released in 1978 existed, Richard Stallman is credited with tying it to the sense under discussion and starting the free software movement in 1983, when he launched the GNU Project: a collaborative effort to create a freedom-respecting operating system, and to revive the spirit of cooperation once prevalent among hackers during the early days of computing.

Context
Free software differs from:
 * proprietary software, such as Microsoft Office, Windows, Adobe Photoshop, Facebook or FaceTime. Users cannot study, change, and share their source code.
 * freeware or gratis software, which is a category of proprietary software that does not require payment for basic use.

For software under the purview of copyright to be free, it must carry a software license whereby the author grants users the aforementioned rights. Software that is not covered by copyright law, such as software in the public domain, is free as long as the source code is also in the public domain, or otherwise available without restrictions.

Proprietary software uses restrictive software licences or EULAs and usually does not provide users with the source code. Users are thus legally or technically prevented from changing the software, and this results in reliance on the publisher to provide updates, help, and support. (See also vendor lock-in and abandonware). Users often may not reverse engineer, modify, or redistribute proprietary software. Beyond copyright law, contracts and a lack of source code, there can exist additional obstacles keeping users from exercising freedom over a piece of software, such as software patents and digital rights management (more specifically, tivoization).

Free software can be a for-profit, commercial activity or not. Some free software is developed by volunteer computer programmers while other is developed by corporations; or even by both.

Naming and differences with open source
Although both definitions refer to almost equivalent corpora of programs, the Free Software Foundation recommends using the term "free software" rather than "open-source software" (an alternative, yet similar, concept coined in 1998), because the goals and messaging are quite dissimilar. According to the Free Software Foundation, "Open source" and its associated campaign mostly focus on the technicalities of the public development model and marketing free software to businesses, while taking the ethical issue of user rights very lightly or even antagonistically. Stallman has also stated that considering the practical advantages of free software is like considering the practical advantages of not being handcuffed, in that it is not necessary for an individual to consider practical reasons in order to realize that being handcuffed is undesirable in itself.

The FSF also notes that "Open Source" has exactly one specific meaning in common English, namely that "you can look at the source code." It states that while the term "Free Software" can lead to two different interpretations, at least one of them is consistent with the intended meaning unlike the term "Open Source". The loan adjective "libre" is often used to avoid the ambiguity of the word "free" in the English language, and the ambiguity with the older usage of "free software" as public-domain software. (See Gratis versus libre.)

Definition and the Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software

The first formal definition of free software was published by FSF in February 1986. That definition, written by Richard Stallman, is still maintained today and states that software is free software if people who receive a copy of the software have the following four freedoms. The numbering begins with zero, not only as a spoof on the common usage of zero-based numbering in programming languages, but also because "Freedom 0" was not initially included in the list, but later added first in the list as it was considered very important.
 * Freedom 0: The freedom to use the program for any purpose.
 * Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
 * Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor.
 * Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible.

Thus, free software means that computer users have the freedom to cooperate with whom they choose, and to control the software they use. To summarize this into a remark distinguishing libre (freedom) software from gratis (zero price) software, the Free Software Foundation says: "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. (See Gratis versus libre.)

In the late 1990s, other groups published their own definitions that describe an almost identical set of software. The most notable are Debian Free Software Guidelines published in 1997, and The Open Source Definition, published in 1998.

The BSD-based operating systems, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, do not have their own formal definitions of free software. Users of these systems generally find the same set of software to be acceptable, but sometimes see copyleft as restrictive. They generally advocate permissive free software licenses, which allow others to use the software as they wish, without being legally forced to provide the source code. Their view is that this permissive approach is more free. The Kerberos, X11, and Apache software licenses are substantially similar in intent and implementation.

Examples
There are thousands of free applications and many operating systems available on the Internet. Users can easily download and install those applications via a package manager that comes included with most Linux distributions.

The Free Software Directory maintains a large database of free-software packages. Some of the best-known examples include Linux-libre, Linux-based operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent. Other influential examples include the Emacs text editor; the GIMP raster drawing and image editor; the X Window System graphical-display system; the LibreOffice office suite; and the TeX and LaTeX typesetting systems.

History
From the 1950s up until the early 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the software freedoms associated with free software, which was typically public-domain software. Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and by hardware manufacturers who welcomed the fact that people were making software that made their hardware useful. Organizations of users and suppliers, for example, SHARE, were formed to facilitate exchange of software. As software was often written in an interpreted language such as BASIC, the source code was distributed to use these programs. Software was also shared and distributed as printed source code (Type-in program) in computer magazines (like Creative Computing, SoftSide, Compute!, Byte, etc.) and books, like the bestseller BASIC Computer Games. By the early 1970s, the picture changed: software costs were dramatically increasing, a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products (free in that the cost was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of "free" software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anti-competitive. While some software might always be free, there would henceforth be a growing amount of software produced primarily for sale. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the software industry began using technical measures (such as only distributing binary copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to study or adapt the software applications as they saw fit. In 1980, copyright law was extended to computer programs.

In 1983, Richard Stallman, one of the original authors of the popular Emacs program and a longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU Project, the purpose of which was to produce a completely non-proprietary Unix-compatible operating system, saying that he had become frustrated with the shift in climate surrounding the computer world and its users. In his initial declaration of the project and its purpose, he specifically cited as a motivation his opposition to being asked to agree to non-disclosure agreements and restrictive licenses which prohibited the free sharing of potentially profitable in-development software, a prohibition directly contrary to the traditional hacker ethic. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He developed a free software definition and the concept of "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all. Some non-software industries are beginning to use techniques similar to those used in free software development for their research and development process; scientists, for example, are looking towards more open development processes, and hardware such as microchips are beginning to be developed with specifications released under copyleft licenses (see the OpenCores project, for instance). Creative Commons and the free-culture movement have also been largely influenced by the free software movement.

1980s: Foundation of the GNU Project
In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU Project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto. The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and "copyleft" ideas.

1990s: Release of the Linux kernel
The Linux kernel, started by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. The first licence was a proprietary software licence. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License. Much like Unix, Torvalds' kernel attracted the attention of volunteer programmers. FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD) were released as free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, was released under the Apache License 1.0.

Licensing

All free-software licenses must grant users all the freedoms discussed above. However, unless the applications' licenses are compatible, combining programs by mixing source code or directly linking binaries is problematic, because of license technicalities. Programs indirectly connected together may avoid this problem.

The majority of free software falls under a small set of licenses. The most popular of these licenses are:
 * The MIT License
 * The GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2)
 * The Apache License
 * The GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3)
 * The BSD License
 * The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
 * The Mozilla Public License (MPL)
 * The Eclipse Public License

The Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative both publish lists of licenses that they find to comply with their own definitions of free software and open-source software respectively:
 * List of FSF approved software licenses
 * List of OSI approved software licenses

The FSF list is not prescriptive: free-software licenses can exist that the FSF has not heard about, or considered important enough to write about. So it is possible for a license to be free and not in the FSF list. The OSI list only lists licenses that have been submitted, considered and approved. All open-source licenses must meet the Open Source Definition in order to be officially recognized as open source software. Free software, on the other hand, is a more informal classification that does not rely on official recognition. Nevertheless, software licensed under licenses that do not meet the Free Software Definition cannot rightly be considered free software.

Apart from these two organizations, the Debian project is seen by some to provide useful advice on whether particular licenses comply with their Debian Free Software Guidelines. Debian does not publish a list of licenses, so its judgments have to be tracked by checking what software they have allowed into their software archives. That is summarized at the Debian web site.

It is rare that a license announced as being in-compliance with the FSF guidelines does not also meet the Open Source Definition, although the reverse is not necessarily true (for example, the NASA Open Source Agreement is an OSI-approved license, but non-free according to FSF).

There are different categories of free software.
 * Public-domain software: the copyright has expired, the work was not copyrighted (released without copyright notice before 1988), or the author has released the software onto the public domain with a waiver statement (in countries where this is possible). Since public-domain software lacks copyright protection, it may be freely incorporated into any work, whether proprietary or free. The FSF recommends the CC0 public domain dedication for this purpose.
 * Permissive licenses, also called BSD-style because they are applied to much of the software distributed with the BSD operating systems. The author retains copyright solely to disclaim warranty and require proper attribution of modified works, and permits redistribution and modification, even closed-source ones.
 * Copyleft licenses, with the GNU General Public License being the most prominent: the author retains copyright and permits redistribution under the restriction that all such redistribution is licensed under the same license. Additions and modifications by others must also be licensed under the same "copyleft" license whenever they are distributed with part of the original licensed product. This is also known as a viral, protective, or reciprocal license.

Proponents of permissive and copyleft licenses disagree on whether software freedom should be viewed as a negative or positive liberty. Due to their restrictions on distribution, not everyone considers copyleft licenses to be free. Conversely, a permissive license may provide an incentive to create non-free software by reducing the cost of developing restricted software. Since this is incompatible with the spirit of software freedom, many people consider permissive licenses to be less free than copyleft licenses.

Security and reliability
There is debate over the security of free software in comparison to proprietary software, with a major issue being security through obscurity. A popular quantitative test in computer security is to use relative counting of known unpatched security flaws. Generally, users of this method advise avoiding products that lack fixes for known security flaws, at least until a fix is available.

Free software advocates strongly believe that this methodology is biased by counting more vulnerabilities for the free software systems, since their source code is accessible and their community is more forthcoming about what problems exist as a part of full disclosure, and proprietary software systems can have undisclosed societal drawbacks, such as disenfranchising less fortunate would-be users of free programs. As users can analyse and trace the source code, many more people with no commercial constraints can inspect the code and find bugs and loopholes than a corporation would find practicable. According to Richard Stallman, user access to the source code makes deploying free software with undesirable hidden spyware functionality far more difficult than for proprietary software.

Some quantitative studies have been done on the subject.

Binary blobs and other proprietary software
In 2006, OpenBSD started the first campaign against the use of binary blobs in kernels. Blobs are usually freely distributable device drivers for hardware from vendors that do not reveal driver source code to users or developers. This restricts the users' freedom effectively to modify the software and distribute modified versions. Also, since the blobs are undocumented and may have bugs, they pose a security risk to any operating system whose kernel includes them. The proclaimed aim of the campaign against blobs is to collect hardware documentation that allows developers to write free software drivers for that hardware, ultimately enabling all free operating systems to become or remain blob-free.

The issue of binary blobs in the Linux kernel and other device drivers motivated some developers in Ireland to launch gNewSense, a Linux-based distribution with all the binary blobs removed. The project received support from the Free Software Foundation and stimulated the creation, headed by the Free Software Foundation Latin America, of the Linux-libre kernel. , Trisquel is the most popular FSF endorsed Linux distribution ranked by Distrowatch (over 12 months). While Debian is not endorsed by the FSF and does not use Linux-libre, it is also a popular distribution available without kernel blobs by default since 2011.

The Linux community uses the term "blob" to refer to all nonfree firmware in a kernel whereas OpenBSD uses the term to refer to device drivers. The FSF does not consider OpenBSD to be blob free under the Linux community's definition of blob.

Business model
Selling software under any free-software licence is permissible, as is commercial use. This is true for licenses with or without copyleft.

Since free software may be freely redistributed, it is generally available at little or no fee. Free software business models are usually based on adding value such as customization, accompanying hardware, support, training, integration, or certification. Exceptions exist however, where the user is charged to obtain a copy of the free application itself.

Fees are usually charged for distribution on compact discs and bootable USB drives, or for services of installing or maintaining the operation of free software. Development of large, commercially used free software is often funded by a combination of user donations, crowdfunding, corporate contributions, and tax money. The SELinux project at the United States National Security Agency is an example of a federally funded free-software project.

Proprietary software, on the other hand, tends to use a different business model, where a customer of the proprietary application pays a fee for a license to legally access and use it. This license may grant the customer the ability to configure some or no parts of the software themselves. Often some level of support is included in the purchase of proprietary software, but additional support services (especially for enterprise applications) are usually available for an additional fee. Some proprietary software vendors will also customize software for a fee.

The Free Software Foundation encourages selling free software. As the Foundation has written, "distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!". For example, the FSF's own recommended license (the GNU GPL) states that "[you] may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated in 2001 that "open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source." This misunderstanding is based on a requirement of copyleft licenses (like the GPL) that if one distributes modified versions of software, they must release the source and use the same license. This requirement does not extend to other software from the same developer. The claim of incompatibility between commercial companies and free software is also a misunderstanding. There are several large companies, e.g. Red Hat and IBM (IBM acquired RedHat in 2019), which do substantial commercial business in the development of free software.

Economic aspects and adoption
Free software played a significant part in the development of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the infrastructure of dot-com companies. Free software allows users to cooperate in enhancing and refining the programs they use; free software is a pure public good rather than a private good. Companies that contribute to free software increase commercial innovation.

The economic viability of free software has been recognized by large corporations such as IBM, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. Many companies whose core business is not in the IT sector choose free software for their Internet information and sales sites, due to the lower initial capital investment and ability to freely customize the application packages. Most companies in the software business include free software in their commercial products if the licenses allow that.

Free software is generally available at no cost and can result in permanently lower TCO (total cost of ownership) compared to proprietary software. With free software, businesses can fit software to their specific needs by changing the software themselves or by hiring programmers to modify it for them. Free software often has no warranty, and more importantly, generally does not assign legal liability to anyone. However, warranties are permitted between any two parties upon the condition of the software and its usage. Such an agreement is made separately from the free software license.

A report by Standish Group estimates that adoption of free software has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year. Eric S. Raymond argued that the term free software is too ambiguous and intimidating for the business community. Raymond promoted the term open-source software as a friendlier alternative for the business and corporate world.

title: Free software


text:
Free

Free may refer to:

Concept

 * Freedom, having the power to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything
 * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism
 * Free-culture movement, a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others
 * Free love, a social movement that accepts all forms of love
 * Emancipate, to procure political rights, as for a disenfranchised group
 * Free will, control exercised by rational agents over their actions and decisions
 * Free of charge, also known as gratis. See Gratis versus libre

Computing

 * Free (programming), a function that releases dynamically allocated memory for reuse
 * Free format, a file format which can be used without restrictions
 * Free software, software usable and distributable with few restrictions and no payment
 * Freeware, a broader class of software available at no cost

Mathematics

 * Free object
 * Free abelian group
 * Free algebra
 * Free group
 * Free module
 * Free semigroup
 * Free variable

People

 * Free (surname)
 * Free (rapper) (born 1968), or Free Marie, American rapper and media personality
 * Free, a pseudonym for the activist and writer Abbie Hoffman
 * Free (active 2003–), American musician in the band FreeSol

Film and television

 * Free (film), a 2001 American dramedy
 * Free!, a Japanese anime series starting in 2013
 * "Free" (Desperate Housewives), a television episode

Bands and groups

 * Free (band), an English rock band 1968–1973
 * Free!!, a Spanish mákina band 1994–2004
 * The Free, a German eurodance band 1994–1999
 * Have Heart, re-formed as Free since 2009, an American straight edge band

Albums

 * Free (Airto album) or the title song, 1972
 * Free (Benny Golson album), 1963
 * Free (Bonfire album) or the title song, 2003
 * Free (Brad Johner album) or the title song, 2003
 * Free (Chico DeBarge album) or the title song, 2003
 * Free (Cody Simpson album) or the title song, 2015
 * Free (Concrete Blonde album), 1989
 * Free (Dana International album) or the title song, 1999
 * Free (David Garrett album), 2007
 * Free (Gavin DeGraw album) or the title song, 2009
 * Free (For Real album) or the title song, 1996
 * Free (Free album), 1969
 * Free (Iggy Pop album) or the title song, 2019
 * Free (Kate Ryan album) or the title song, 2008
 * Free (Jann Arden album) or the title song, 2009
 * Free (Kierra Sheard album) or the title song, 2011
 * Free (Lisa Shaw album) or the title song, 2009
 * Free (Mao Abe album) or the title song (see below), 2009
 * Free (Marcus Miller album), 2007
 * Free (Negativland album), 1993
 * Free (OSI album) or the title song, 2006
 * Free (The Party album) or the title song, 1992
 * Free (Prince Markie Dee album) or the title song, 1992
 * Free (Rick Astley album), 1991
 * Free (Rivermaya album), 2000
 * Free (Twin Atlantic album) or the title song, 2011
 * Free (Virtue album) or the title song, 2003
 * Free... (EP), by Acid King, or the title song, 2001
 * Free (Based Freestyles Mixtape), by Lil B and Chance the Rapper, 2015
 * Free, by Hundredth, 2015
 * free*, by Jim's Big Ego, 2008
 * Free, by Libera, 2004
 * Free, by Planetshakers, 2008
 * Free, by Stone, 1992

Songs

 * "Free" (Broods song), 2016
 * "Free" (Chicago song), 1971
 * "Free" (Dara Maclean song), 2011
 * "Free" (Deniece Williams song), 1976
 * "Free" (Erika song), 2007
 * "Free" (Estelle song), 2004
 * "Free" (Florence and the Machine song), 2022
 * "Free" (Haley Reinhart song), 2012
 * "Free" (Mao Abe song), 2008
 * "Free" (Mýa song), 2001
 * "Free" (Natalia Kills song), 2011
 * "Free" (Pete Murray song), 2011
 * "Free" (Phish song), 1996
 * "Free" (Rudimental song), 2013
 * "Free" (Sarah Brightman song), 2003
 * "Free" (Train song), 1998
 * "Free" (Ultra Naté song), 1997
 * "Free" (Zac Brown Band song), 2010
 * "Free", by Alesha Dixon from Fired Up, 2006
 * "Free", by Bacon Popper, 1998
 * "Free", by Blue October UK from One Day Silver, One Day Gold, 2005
 * "Free", by the Cars from Move Like This, 2011
 * "Free", by Cat Power from You Are Free, 2003
 * "Free", by Charlie Puth, 2020
 * "Free", by Chris Madlin and by Crush 40 from the video game Sonic Free Riders, 2010
 * "Free", by Dani Harmer, the theme from Dani's House, 2008
 * "Free", by Depeche Mode, B-side of "Precious", 2005
 * "Free", by Destiny's Child from Destiny Fulfilled, 2004
 * "Free", by DJ Quicksilver, 1997
 * "Free", by Donna De Lory from Bliss, 2000
 * "Free", by Enrique Iglesias from 7, 2003
 * "Free", by Ginny Owens from Without Condition, 1999
 * "Free", by Graffiti6 from Colours, 2010
 * "Free", by H.E.R. from H.E.R., 2017
 * "Free", by Jaguar Wright from Divorcing Neo 2 Marry Soul, 2005
 * "Free", by Jeremy Camp from Reckless, 2013
 * "Free", by Jon Secada, 2006
 * "Free", by Little Big Town from The Breaker, 2017
 * "Free", by Louis the Child from Here for Now, 2020
 * "Free", by the Martinis from Empire Records: The Soundtrack, 1995
 * "Free", by Michelle Williams from Journey to Freedom, 2014
 * "Free", by Mikolas Josef, 2016
 * "Free", by Nakatomi, 1995
 * "Free", by Parcels, 2021
 * "Free", by Pink from Try This, 2003
 * "Free", by Plumb from Beautiful Lumps of Coal, 2003
 * "Free", by Powerman 5000 from Transform, 2003
 * "Free", by Primal Scream from Give Out but Don't Give Up, 1994
 * "Free", by Prince from 1999, 1982
 * "Free", by Quiet Riot from Rehab, 2006
 * "Free", by Stephanie Mills from Born for This!, 2004
 * "Free", by Stevie Wonder from Characters, 1987
 * "Free", by Stryper from To Hell with the Devil, 1986
 * "Free", by VAST from Music for People, 2000
 * "Free", by Why Don't We, 2016
 * "Free", by Will Downing, 1988
 * "Free", by Yu Yamada, the ending theme for the anime Basquash!, 2009
 * "Free", written by Irving Berlin

Other media

 * Free (Anderson book), a 2009 economics book by Chris Anderson
 * Free (Ypi book), a 2021 memoir by Lea Ypi
 * Free (Soul Eater), a character from the manga and anime Soul Eater

Organizations

 * Fight Repression of Erotic Expression, a University of Minnesota student group, now the Queer Student Cultural Center
 * Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, a libertarian think tank founded by Ron Paul
 * Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, a think tank that promotes free-market environmentalism
 * Free (ISP), a French internet service provider
 * Free Airlines, a Kinshasa Congolese air operator

Other

 * Free (cigarette), from Brazil
 * Free, Indiana, US; an unincorporated community
 * Free content, material without significant legal usability restrictions
 * Free festival, a combination of music, arts and cultural activities, for which often no admission is charged, but involvement is preferred
 * Free Money Day, an annual global event held since 2011 as a social experiment and to promote sharing and alternative economic ideas
 * Free party, a party "free" from the restrictions of the legal club scene, similar to the free festival movement
 * Free public transport, public transport whereby passengers don't have to pay any fees
 * Voyah Free, a hybrid/electric car produced since 2021 onwards by Dongfeng Motor Corporation

title: Free


text:
Talk:Free software

Control over the Software and the computer.
This article almost completly ignores the question of the control by the user. Though this notion must be criticaly important to free software, since the free software definition by the fsf says:

I'm not one hundred percent fluent in english, so I would not modify the article on my own for now. But I think, the article needs seriously to include this notion of control,to be accurate. --Pparent (talk) 11:00, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

 * We should try to include a paragraph on it as it is mentioned by fsf as well as outside fsf a quite few times. Belorn (talk) 10:38, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Length of See also
I am considering shrinking the size of the See also section by only linking to one list of software projects. The one I think we should keep is List of free and open source software packages, and thus remove List of formerly proprietary software, List of free software project directories and List of free software for Web 2.0 Services. What are other people's thoughts on this? Belorn (talk) 16:25, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

 * You could alternatively make a list of lists perhaps? That would tidy up the see also section. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

 * This See Also section is not too long, though I'm about to move the lists to a sub-section. Providing the reader with access to all the lists is important for an encyclopedia. Lentower (talk) 18:01, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * A few of the entries in that "See Also" list appear to be already present in the article. I'll go through and see which links in the section duplicate wikilinks already in the body of the article and remove these per WP:SEEALSO. - SudoGhost 18:21, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

 * Now that I think of it. Should Portal:Free software be added to the see also list? Belorn (talk) 20:57, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It's already there, in one of the boxes to the right. - SudoGhost 21:57, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You are so right. I must be blind :). Thanks. Belorn (talk) 22:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I added "*Category:Free software lists and comparisons" to the Lists sub-section. This is roughly the same as IRWolfie-'s idea of a '''Lists of lists about free software.

It might be possible to get a list of the lists added to the Portal, too. Lentower (talk) 03:27, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

incompatible with many familiar legal arrangements
I find the following sentence bordering on pejorative:

 * "Although the terms of free software are incompatible with many familiar legal arrangements by which developers are paid, they may still seek compensation by other routes that are compatible."

Would it make sense to reword it to something like:

 * Rather than selling the software itself (or permission to use it) to earn a living, developers of free software typically do so by offering professional services such as software development (e.g. custom extensions, adapting and improving the software), support, training and consultancy.

Reason: there is a subtle implication that free software developers are working outside of or on the fringes of the law. The terms of free software are also compatible "with many familiar legal arrangements by which developers are paid". In the former wording "many" could be changed to "some of the". The latter wording takes the reader a little further by mentioning the sorts of services that free software developers might offer to earn a living. - Kim Tucker (talk) 10:32, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

 * Not outside "the law," which is an utterly absurd reading, but absolutely outside of dependence on intellectual property law, because Stallman considers it repugnant. The sort of detail you propose is already discussed in the body of the article; the passage in the introduction is for the sake of getting the "freedom vs. price" distinction out of the way before moving on to details. 2001:558:6045:1D:56E:DCCB:ED9D:24EA (talk) 05:58, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

 * This really needs improvement. Because Free Software it's not about how programmers get paid. And it's certainly not about "intellectual property" (which is flimsy term anyway, that lumps together unrelated legal aspects; and is often used to manipulate by intentional blurring it incurrs). To put the aspect of programmer compensation into the intro of the article Free Software, is thus a focussing on side-issues, where these are not appropriate: Thus is a violation of the recommendations of Lead_section. Hnfiurgds (talk) 20:03, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * A way to mention "money-aspects" of free software, is to say it like it is. Hnfiurgds (talk) 21:08, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Revert of Intro
I'm going to explain why these changes are reverted: The reverted intro mentioned "legal rights to source code, that the software's creators have". Well Free Software is not at all about this: Any legal rights can be changed by politics; they are not set in stone. Free Software is about Freedoms of the users, and not about giving them what you believe legal rights of "creators" or authors to be, or what politics will legislate these rights to be. The reverted intro mentioned "These rights are granted independently of whether the author receives any payment for creating the software." Well: the original author still has control how she wishes to distribute the software. She can give it away gratis of request some payment. But the point is: If it really is free software, then she can not stop any users of the software from redistributing it (for gratis or for a fee): She cannot dictate to them how to use it, or with whom to cooperate. The reverted intro mentioned "Although the terms of free software are incompatible with developer compensation arrangements based on intellectual property law, developers may still seek compensation through other arrangements that are compatible." Intellectual property law can be: copyright, trademarkts, patents. What are you talking about? Well let's assume it is in fact any of the 3. None have any terms whatsoever about programmer compensation. Example: copyright only says what can and cannot be done, by someone who receives the work. It has no influence on what fee the author asks in order for someone to receive the work. Furthermore: a lot of free software licences (e.g. GNU GPL) are actually based on copyright law, and thus have real legal leverage. So a lot of free software makes use of copyright fundamentally and then grants very specific exceptions to it, but only if these exceptions protect the user's freedoms. It's still very much copyrighted, and can be distributed for a fee or not. So the quoted reverted sentence had errors regarding "compensation arrangements based on intellectual property law"... What does free software say about compensation: Basically nothing much. It's a side issue: Anyone who has received free software can distribute/redistribute it for any fee, or gratis. You can even choose to re/distribute it to a potential new user, only if you are given 30 bottles of some vintage Schnapps! Or you can choose not to re/distribute it at all. So it's absolutely up to the user, who thus has freedom. Hnfiurgds (talk) 20:44, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Here's a way to mention "money aspects" of free software: "users are free – which includes the freedom to redistribute the software, which can be done gratis or for a fee". Hnfiurgds (talk) 21:10, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

You complain that FS is not "about" extending legal rights. I never said it was. Extending these legal rights is, however, the means through which freedom is guaranteed, and that is what my text said. I think that is more helpful to people approaching the subject because it is concrete, as opposed to talking about "software that respects this-or-that" and "putting users first." How is a newcomer supposed to make sense of these phrases? This is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not an agitprop session.

You go on to ask "what I'm talking about" with regard to intellectual property law. Well, I'm citing Stallman, and he's talking about copyright, although he loathes the other stuff as well. So if you want to change to copyright that's fine with regard to the source. However there were points in the history of software licensing when companies considered relying on other forms of intellectual property (e.g. trademark in the case of Java) so why not keep it general? It is no secret that software companies rely on IP law to enforce their software fee structure. Stallman knows it, and I would hope that you do as well, but that isn't required because I'm citing Stallman. Again, this is not an agitprop session. It is an encyclopedia for the purpose of explaining concepts by reference to sources. 2001:558:6045:1D:56E:DCCB:ED9D:24EA (talk) 21:49, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Free Software is not defined by "open availability"

 * Revert. Why? Because the version is not accurate and has numerous errors. Example: "Free software [...] is software provided under terms that guarantee the freedom of all computer users (individually or in groups) to obtain it, [...]" This is wrong. Hence please don't edit an article about whose subject matter you do not know enough about. It's wrong since you do NOT every computer user has the freedom to obtain it. In contrast: only if have you obtained it, are you granted the freedoms which free software guarantees. Thus your assertion in the very first sentence is BLATENTLY WRONG. Of course: usually it is possible for everyone to receive copies, since they are provided via anonymous download. Why is it thus free software? Not because of the availablility. NO. But instead, because if you obtain it, you obtain with it freedoms to redistribute it, modify it, etc. Other errors regarding compensation (and they way it is phrased) were already mentioned previously. Hnfiurgds (talk) 04:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I have made another attempt to address my concerns about the opening sentences. I hope you will review it with the usual good faith assumption and respond. 2001:558:6045:1D:56E:DCCB:ED9D:24EA (talk) 05:56, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Free software development
Following a discussion at Redirects for discussion/Log/2013 May 31, Free software development now redirects to this article. In the discussion it was suggested that a section on development may be appropriate to this article, and that if one is written the redirect should be refined to point to that section. This note is just so you are aware of the suggestion and can consider it. Thryduulf (talk) 10:44, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Revert of recent edits
User:Hnfiurgds recently reverted dozens of edits that I have recently made to the article, because they do not agree with some changes I made to the lead/intro. I am totally open to collaborating with you, if you want to express your disagreements here, but you should really be careful about only reverting the changes that I made which you actually disagree with (rather than wholesale reverting a bunch of image formatting fixes, article cleanup, etc. along with the sentence they don't like). There is no sense undoing all the work I did over a small quibble about wording in the lead paragraph. Let's work a definition we can all agree upon here, and improve on my work by incorporating it into the current article. That said, I'm not really clear where you are coming from with when you say:
 * Undo: "released with the intent to guarantee users' freedoms to study and modify software through the OPEN AVAILABILITY OF ITS SOURCE CODE" ->wrong!!! Only if have you OBTAINED free software, are you granted the freedoms which free software guarantees.

... could you elaborate on what your problem with my changes are? Do you believe that open source code is not critical to providing the freedom to modify software? How would you modify it without source code? -- Mesoderm (talk) 18:30, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

 * "Open availability" implies that everyone can get it. That is not the defining feature of Free Software. To understand why, please see here. In other words: Free software is not about free availability, or open availability; and yes: it's not even about open availability of source code, that everyone can get. Rather, it is defined as freedoms that a user gets, once he receives the software. There is no requirement of free software having to be available to everyone. (Of course there is also nothing that forbids availability for everyone; in particular: any user who has free software, has the freedom to make it available to everyone, if he/she so wishes).

The Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative have largely approved the same software licenses; the focus of license-approval being only license-contents and definitions, not social or ethical values.) And this is still blatently wrong. "Free Software [...] released with the intent to guarantee users' freedoms to study and modify software through the open availability of its source code". Cut the word open. Or even better use this: Free Software is provided under terms, such that a user receiving the software, receives with it the corresponding source code (or ability to obtain it) and the freedom to run the software for any purpose, adapt/modify it, and redistribute it with or without changes. Hnfiurgds (talk) 21:03, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Another weak point in your form of the intro, is the use of the wording "open source".
 * Here's a paragraph that might help clear that up:
 * The term open source (and open source software) from the Open Source Initiative (OSI), while usually referring to the same category of software as free software, focuses on different values than those associated with the term free software:  The FSF's and GNU projects' focus (associated with the term free software) is the freedom of the users (viewed as an important social, political and ethical ideology/concern), while OSI's focus (associated with the term open source) is the highlighting of practical benefits and the development method, while not raising ethical issues, such as issues of freedom.
 * So I think those 2 things (open availability, open source) can be improved in the article. By the way: I prefer the previous version of the intro, as it has much better focus on free software's defining feature: freedom. The current version skirts around a bit. Example - it says: oh hey, you need no fear of legal penalties. That's true, but it is a minor point, that comes from free software's freedoms. etc.
 * Sorry about reverting all your edits, I thought they were only in the intro.
 * Hnfiurgds (talk) 19:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the time to explain! I agree with you that the primary focus in this article should be on freedom rather than open source (which has its own article). On the other hand, I also think it's crucial to point out that the freedom in free software is, in part, derived from the fact that the source code is open (i.e. if you have no source code, you cannot have freedom in the free software sense). So I tried to incorporate both of these into the lead, including an entire paragraph on freedom, namely:
 * The term "free software" and its exact definition,[4] as well as the freedom philosophy behind it, were coined and have developed since the beginning of the GNU project (to create a freedom-respecting operating system) and the founding of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985 by Richard Stallman. This definition states that users of free software are "free" because they do not need to ask for any permission; and they are are not restricted in activities through restrictive proprietary licenses (e.g. copy-restriction), or requirements of having to agree to restrictive terms of others (e.g. non-disclosure agreements), and they are not already restricted from the outset (e.g. through deliberate non-availability of source code).[9] Thus, free software is primarily a matter of liberty, not price (users are free to do whatever they want with it – which includes the freedom to redistribute the software gratis (free-of-charge), or by selling it for profit[10]
 * That is, more than 1/3 of the intro is currently focusing on the issues you are talking about, so I definitely don't feel like I'm trying to skirt around it. The old lead had a lot of problems with readability and repetition (for instance, it discussed the founding by Richard Stallman in multiple places, and talked about freedom to distribute 3 times) ... I feel that we need to say everything once, and make sure we say it clearly. But I also don't want you to feel like it's not covering something important. How would you integrate your ideas about open availability into the current intro, without having to revert back to the redundant/repetitive and disorganized older version? Thanks again for your suggestions! -- Mesoderm (talk) 19:42, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * For a start, I'd suggest getting rid of the words "open"... e.g. in "open availability, etc.": Rationale. Hnfiurgds (talk) 20:35, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I like your suggestion a lot, as far as removing the word "open" and just saying "availability of its source code". I went ahead and removed it, and also tried to incorporate your other suggestions as well as possible. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions for improvement. -- Mesoderm (talk) 23:30, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The intro still is not good enough. And an intro really needs to be good. Examples of what can be improved: "proprietary software [...] threatens users with legal penalties if they do not conform to the terms of restrictive software licenses". (No software can ever threaten anybody.) What more? Do you think copyrightholders of free software can not or will not threaten if someone does not conform to a freedomrespecting software license?? Well: Copyright holders of free software most definately can not only threatened, but also successfully win cases where user's violate the licences of the free software. See http://gpl-violations.org  (example) and BusyBox. (Hint: The GNU GPL is based on copyright law, and thus has full legal power). You wrote "free software [...] users are free to do whatever they want with it". It should be clear from the previous points made, that this is not true. Users have freedom, but they must still respect license terms. Example: Users are in violation of the GNU GPL license, if they fail to pass on freedom when passing on the software. Hnfiurgds (talk) 17:01, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Confused by introduction text: FS vs PD ?
Just came to this page for the first time to learn more about this subject. The intro says: "Free software[1] is computer software that is distributed along with its source code, and is released under terms that guarantee users the freedom to study, adapt/modify, and distribute the software.[2][3][4][5][6]" What confuses me is that these "guarantees" are also provided by putting the programming code into the public domain. Because this intro paragraph implicitly reads as a definition of what free software is, it becomes important to understand how free software is differentiated from public domain software. If these guarantees are all that define free software then the two are indistinguishable. If there is more to the distinction then that ought to be reflected in the intro text. 66.97.209.215 (talk) 04:32, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Intro is wrong
Loads of things wrong:

I hope this gets fixed. I'd dig in, but seeing the recent edits, I expect there would be more discussion than I, unfortunately, have time for this week. Gronky (talk) 00:30, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * First, source and a licence isn't enough. Tivoised software can have these two things and it won't be free software.
 * Second, the licence doesn't have to "guarantee" these freedoms. Look at BSD licences, they grant the rights, but it's an abuse of language to say they "guarantee" the rights, and yet they're still free software
 * Third, a licence isn't even always necessary. Public domain source code is free software in many/most countries.
 * Fourth, yes, some/much free software is written by volunteers and communities, but that's no reason to not mention that other free software is written by traditional businesses (including megacorps, even including Microsoft)
 * Fifth, it should be mentioned that free software and open source software overlap on almost 100% of cases. When people hear about some great piece of open source software, it's a very safe bet that they've just heard about some great piece of free software.  This article should mention this.  There is a difference in philosophy between the free software movement and the open source whatever, yes, but they are not distinct sets of software.
 * I agree and almost said some of the same things. In short, Free Software must respect the freedom of the user(s). Everything else, such as license and even the source code, is a secondary point, a bandaid to facilitate that freedom. --Trakon (talk) 23:35, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Nobody has objected. I am going to take these proposals further. --isacdaavid 02:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Introduction
I feel the circumstances in which the term became associated with the definition provided by the FSF should be better emphasized, and the reasons as to why it is important to prioritize it over deducting the meaning of the term from the generic dictionary meanings of "free" and "software". Skl (talk) 21:26, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Changes to the intro and what can still be improved
(summary: too much repetition. all three paragraphs say that free software is about freedom, and the mechanics of how softwar becomes proprietary are explained twice in the 2nd para and again in the 3rd.  To write this intro propery, one has to make a list of what is explained, then group the similar things together, then put those groups of sentences in a logical order.)

Hi,

The intro is very good, but I made a few small changes which I'll explain:

 * "protected by copyright" -> "covered by copyright" ("protected" is the point of view of people who see modification as an attack)
 * "usually achieve by a software licence": deleted "usually". Is there any other way?
 * the 2nd paragraph wasn't factually wrong, but it was badly organised, talking about proprietary software, then some consequences of not having freedom, then freeware, then some other consequences of not having freedom... so I rearranged the information and removed some duplicate stuff
 * removed "(e.g. copy-restriction)": this is not an everyday term, so it won't help explain the sentence to an average reader. The term also has no fixed meaning, so it doesn't really help much explaining things to anyone.
 * the 3rd paragraph again repeats stuff from the 1st and 2nd about what it means to be free or proprietary. that sort of stuff should be said just once.  the reader won't have forgotten it two paragraphs later.  also, when examples are given in three different places, the reader could wonder what to deduce from the examples being different each time - is the article discussing three difference categories of proprietary?

There are still some improvements I think would be worth making, but it takes time to craft a good text, so I'll have to leave it for another day:

 * The intro should better explain that benefit of free software isn't about you having freedoms, but about all users having freedoms, and thus the users being in control, or being able to take control (and the threat of this happening is often enough to keep companies honest). RMS's goal is to improve society, to escape dominance.  The four freedoms are the the means, not the end.
 * "restrictive software licences" - ok, that's often true, but software can also be proprietary because of the absence of a licence. no licence = no freedoms.
 * The second paragraph still needs work to make it coherent and flowing. I'm not sure if I have to explain that, or if it's clear to everyone.  Everything similar should be grouped together and each group of sentences should form the basis for the next group.

.Gronky (talk) 13:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Move suggestion
Hello, I'm suggesting a move of to a disambiguation page as what I did for moving this article, since in English language the term 'free' has two different meanings: and it's possible that some people who type 'free software' and thinking of freeware get redirected to a different article. I have no personal interest on this subject, but I'm much interested in the neutrality of articles in Wikipedia. Ttt74 (talk) 11:46, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

 * I suggest you consider that editors who do have a personal interest in the subject are better qualified to pick the article name, to organize the collection of related articles, and to decide what is considered neutral in this field, than a very new WP editor who does not claim native-level fluency in English. Your editing history suggests you have not been on Wikipedia for very long - you should probably gain more experience before making major edits, particularly article moves, without discussion... especially articles with long and recently-active edit history. Moves can be VERY disruptive and annoying. Please also see WP:TITLE and in particular WP:COMMONNAME. Jeh (talk) 12:06, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not the right place to do discrimination against other ethnicity and cultures especially when someone considers that editors who does not claim native-level fluency in English are not qualified to contribute to Wikipedia. Ttt74 (talk) 12:47, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Nothing I said was in any way discriminatory. I made no reference at all to your ethnicity or culture, and I never said you were not qualified to contribute to Wikipedia at all. Further answers will be found in my replies to your egregious templating on my talk page. Jeh (talk) 19:03, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 23 February 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved  — Amakuru (talk) 11:27, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Free software → Free_software_(FSF definition) – in English language the term 'free' has two different meanings: and it's possible that some people who type 'free software' and thinking of freeware get redirected to a different article. this article should be better a disambiguation page. Ttt74 (talk) 12:18, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Opposed. The term free can have many meanings in English, but basically they all boil down to a single one. But the definition of a single word is not the issue, the topic is free software, which has a meaning that is widely understood.  For other possibilities, the article already has enough hat notes to distinguish those intentions. Adding a term (FSF) that is less known to the general public doesn't help in the distinction. Kbrose (talk) 15:40, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The term free can have many meanings in English, but basically they all boil down to a single one: can you explain what you mean? because this sounds illogical. Adding a term (FSF) that is less known to the general public doesn't help in the distinction: this existing article speaks only about free software on the side of the software freedom criteria according to FSF definition. So it will be more appropriate to move this article to its right place. Ttt74 (talk) 17:04, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

 * Oppose In this field, with which the proposer professed unfamiliarity above, "Free software" is the WP:COMMONNAME. There are a number of "see also" templates at the top of the article that will help people find the correct pages if this isn't the one they want. This isn't broken - let's not "fix" it. Jeh (talk) 19:07, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It's better to explain why you think that I'm 'professing unfamiliarity'. Ttt74 (talk) 09:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It's better that you respond to the actual point, that "Free software" is the WP:COMMONNAME. Have you actually read WP:COMMONNAME? Do you deny that "Free software" is the WP:COMMONNAME? I doubt you'll find many references to back up that opinion. But anyway, you said it here: "I have no personal interest on this subject". Jeh (talk) 10:18, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Again, can you explain why you accused me of declaring false claim publicly, when I said "I have no personal interest on this subject"? because what I meant was only my unfamiliarity towards the original Free software article: As such, I wanted to say that I don't have any personal interest or POV-pushing against this misplaced article: I was only considering a move in order to make the original article a disambiguation page. Ttt74 (talk) 11:15, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you prove how 'Free software' has a WP:COMMONNAME: because AFAIK it's the first time I hear of that. Ttt74 (talk) 11:15, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. You communicated vaguely, such that what you meant was actually something quite different from what you wrote. And now you think I'm accusing you of making a false claim because I assumed you meant what any reasonable person would assume you meant. Got it.
 * I think you misunderstand the move process. It is not up to supporters of the status quo to prove that the existing name is correct, or that there is consensus for the current name. The current name is presumed to have consensus. It is up to those who support the move to establish a new consensus. "Proof" in the absolute sense is not required, but a goodly amount of evidence is. Now, per WP:COMMONNAME, Wikipedia articles are normally named according to the most commonly used name for the subject if this is different from the "official" name. (For example, "Bill Clinton" vs. "William Jefferson Clinton".) So if you want the article moved you have to find some significant evidence that "Free software" isn't the common name for what is here called "Free software". So far you haven't provided any evidence, only your claims of what you think people are looking for when they type the term. Jeh (talk) 11:52, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

 * Oppose - This subject is the WP:COMMONNAME for the term "free software". - Aoidh (talk) 04:34, 28 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Not move page. --忍者ポップ (talk) 05:34, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Lovelace — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.172.61.109 (talk) 13:44, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

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Was Free Software an "existing term" before GNU/FSF?
This article states the following:

"Richard Stallman used the already existing term free software when he launched the GNU Project—a collaborative effort to create a freedom-respecting operating system . . ."

It is my opinion that the context of the term Free Software used in this article from InfoWorld relates directly to the cost of software not the idea of what the free software term describes.

Examples to illustrate my point:

 * "Maybe there's no such thing as a free lunch, but there is free software"
 * "In contrast to commercial software is a large and growing body of free software that exists in the public-domain."
 * "Public-domain software is written by microcomputer hobbyists (also known as 'hackers'), many of whom are professional programmers in their work life."

I think this article uses the term "free software" solely to describe gratis software and uses the term "public-domain software" to describe the licensing and freedom aspects of it.

My suggestion is to remove the "already existing term" portion entirely because that source doesn't relate to what the term means. --RottNKorpse (talk) 22:56, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

 * The reference does prove that Stallman didn't coin the term (and he even mentions the weakening of the existing free software-like community as a reason for starting a new one). However, I question whether mentioning this is relevant to the article at all. --isacdaavid 22:08, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Stallman used an existing combination of English words, and insisted on giving them a specific meaning to which they are not ordinarly restricted. Free software used to mean, for instance, that you got Fortran with your IBM mainframe. KazKylheku (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

"Binary blobs and other proprietary software"
The text mostly talks about binary kernel modules ("Blobs are usually freely distributable device drivers", "The issue of binary blobs in the Linux kernel and other device drivers motivated") which aren't all that relevant here. The cited advances in blob-free operating systems are mostly related to firmware blobs, not kernel modules. This should probably be cleaned up. -- Phiarc (talk) 22:20, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposals: the issue of the separate Free software movement and Open-source software movement articles
Please participate in the discussion I started over at Talk:Free software movement: Merger proposals: the issue of the separate Open-source software movement article.

Please comment there and not here for a centralized discussion. Thank you.

--Fixuture (talk) 21:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 June 2018
217.168.211.38 (talk) 21:31, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.  spintendo   22:04, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Outdated info: TOP500

 * Of the world's five hundred fastest supercomputers, 494 (98.8%) use the Linux kernel.

Since November 2017, it's ALL of them, 100% market share. --179.179.163.242 (talk) 22:39, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Awful NPOV!
"Free software" is a combination of English words which some people in a specific discussion context use to denote software redistributed under liberal terms in source code form.

If you win a copy of Adobe Illustrator in a raffle, that meets the dictionary definition of "free software".

KazKylheku (talk) 20:05, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * As mentioned in the 2016 requested move, free software is the common name for the subject of this article (software that preserves user freedoms). The common name of software that is distributed free of charge is freeware. Adobe Illustrator isn't designated as free software or freeware on Wikipedia because reliable sources don't describe it using these terms. —  Newslinger  talk   16:44, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:43, 20 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.jpg

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
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 * Richard Matthew Stallman.jpeg

WP:RSN Discussion of a source related to FOSS topics
is here FYI. -- Yae4 (talk) 18:51, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Free software