# Free software

Date: 2021-07-22 14:25:13 +08:00Date modified: 2021-08-29 01:08:22 +08:00

Per roam:Free Software Foundation:

> Free software means that the users have the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software.

- a software that is primarily concerned with the liberty of the user regards to the software; thus, a dedicated user can influence the project working in the same realm as the team

- one of the major components for roam:Free culture movement

- "free as in free speech, not as in beer" is a popular phrase to describe the idea; thus, also applying that free software doesn't have to be free in price but it should still support the idea of openness with software

- despite the moniker, several companies have been making profits from free software

  - roam:Red Hat is one of the biggest for-profit companies from selling support for Linux-based ecosystems

  - Sony made the operating systems for PS3, PS4, and PS5 from roam:FreeBSD

  - roam:Microsoft has been making free software (e.g., roam:Visual Studio Code, roam:TypeScript)

- practically, a lot of the free software applications are created and maintained by volunteers in their spare time

- furthermore, a lot of them are user-centric (e.g., roam:GNUnet, Guix package manager) usually catering to power users and tinkerers with options for advanced configurations

- due to their open nature, it often represents how Openness makes diversity with the options to create forks of the software

- most of them are also interested in compatibility as opposed to creating ecosystem from scratch; it is likely motivated from just pragmatism

  - roam:Inkscape offers importing from formats from its competitors such a Adobe Illustrator AI format

  - roam:LibreOffice can open several versions of Microsoft Word documents and AppleWorks documents

## Backlinks

- GNU Emacs
- Why wishing a unified Linux distro is a pointless task
- The Packaging Grail