WHAT IS FREE SOFTWARE?
The term free software is often thought about in terms of cost, In fact the term refers to free as in freedom, in fact free software can be sold.
Imagine a piece of software is like a book. You are allowed to read it, but you are not allowed to talk about it, write about it or lend it to others. Sometimes you aren't even allowed to open the book and sometimes the publisher will remove the book – that you paid for – from your shelf without asking for your permission. That is called “nonfree”, or “proprietary”, software. And it really happened (although with an ebook, 1984, not software) [4].
Free software is the opposite. As originally defined by the Free Software Foundation [1] it gives users 4 fundamental freedoms:
Run software for any purpose (Freedom 0)
Study how the software works (Freedom 1)
Modify the software (Freedom 2)
Share the software with others. (Freedom 3)
These freedoms are defined in the GNU [2] General Public license, which is currently version 3. There are different licences: for software libraries, there is the LGPL (Lesser General Public License) which allows a software to be included in nonfree programs. Also, for software that runs on the internet, there is the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), which requires the service provider to share the source code for the service with you, the user.
So why is this important? One reason is that in order it allows anyone to use the software, you are not bound by restrictive (“nonfree” or “proprietary”) licenses that, for example, restrict use of an office package to only being used for study, which is the case of a student license.
Another reason is that, if the source code is available, you can examine it and see what the code is actually doing (or ask a friend to do it for you). This is important for privacy, security, and overall quality. For example you can modify the code and fix errors, security problems or just make the software more localised, for example changing “zip code” to “postcode”.
But free software is not only about computer code. Non-programmers can also contribute to free software projects. For example by reporting problems that you may find during your usage of the program, by writing documentation, translating the program into a language you speak, or by helping other users with problems you have solved before. Free software projects appreciate every kind of contribution. With free software projects you're talking directly to the developers, not an expensive support hotline that is hardly ever helpful.
One of the biggest free software projects you may have already heard of is Linux, this is in fact just the kernel (the core of an operating system). The kernel sits between the hardware and other software on your computer and manages system resources. When combined with other software (e.g tools) that are part of the GNU project, you get GNU/Linux. Linux (and GNU/Linux) is used in billions of devices from mobile phones (e.g part of the Android OS, although GNU is not used there) up to supercomputers, that for example the MET office uses to predict the weather. In fact, all of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers use GNU/Linux [5]. Unfortunately Linux contains some nonfree software, so there is a set of patches it called Linux-libre to remove the nonfree blobs (binary programs without source code), and other nonfree software.
Conclusion
If you would like more control over your devices, try free software. You can start by replacing Microsoft Office with LibreOffice [6]. Use a free privacy-respecting internet browser like GNU IceCat [8] (or Firefox, but make sure to disable DRM!) instead of Google Chrome. Install GNU/Linux on your friend's slow laptop (or your own), it will run much faster! You can also get freedom respecting hardware [3] with Libreboot [7].
1 https://www.fsf.org
2 https://www.gnu.org
3 https://ryf.fsf.org/](https://ryf.fsf.org/)
4 https://io9.gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703
5 https://itsfoss.com/linux-runs-top-supercomputers/
6 https://switching.software/
7 https://libreboot.org/
8 https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
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