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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The Free Software Definition is a policy document written by Richard Stallman and published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). For those who accept the authority of the FSF, it defines free software as software that grants users the freedom to use, study, share, and modify the software. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech", not "free of charge".[1]
The earliest known publication of the definition appeared in the February 1986 edition of the now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin published by the FSF.[2] Since 1996, the official version of the document has been maintained in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of March 2025[update], the definition had seen 27 major revisions since it was originally published online and it had been translated into 65 languages.[3][4] The FSF also publishes a list of licenses that meets this definition.
The definition published by the FSF in 1986 originally listed two key points:[2]
The word "free" in our name does not refer to price; it refers to freedom. First, the freedom to copy a program and redistribute it to your neighbors, so that they can use it as well as you. Second, the freedom to change a program, so that you can control it instead of it controlling you; for this, the source code must be made available to you.
In 1996, when the GNU Project website was launched, the definition was expanded to include "three levels of freedom", explicitly adding the freedom to study the software (which had been implied in the original).[5][6] Stallman later discouraged describing them as "levels," noting that all freedoms are equally essential.[7]
A fourth freedom was later introduced to explicitly affirm the user's right to run the program. Because it was seen as more fundamental than the others, it was placed first. Since the existing freedoms were numbered one through three, this new one was designated "freedom zero".[8] Such zero-based numbering, where counting begins at zero, is also a common convention in computer programming.[9]
The modern definition states that a program is free software if it grants users the following four essential freedoms:[10]
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available, as studying and modifying software without source code is impractical.
In July 1997, Bruce Perens published the Debian Free Software Guidelines.[11] A definition based on the DFSG was later adopted by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) under the name The Open Source Definition.
Despite philosophical differences between the free software movement and the open-source movement, the FSF's definition of free software and the OSI's definition of open-source software describe largely overlapping sets of licenses, with only a few minor differences. While emphasizing these philosophical distinctions, the FSF states:
The term "open source" software is used by some people to mean more or less the same category as free software. It is not exactly the same class of software: they accept some licences that we consider too restrictive, and there are free software licences they have not accepted. However, the differences in extension of the category are small: nearly all free software is open source, and nearly all open source software is free.
— Free Software Foundation[12]
The reason they are numbered 0, 1, 2 and 3 is historical. Around 1990 there were three freedoms, numbered 1, 2 and 3. Then we realized that the freedom to run the program needed to be mentioned explicitly. It was clearly more basic than the other three, so it properly should precede them. Rather than renumber the others, we made it freedom 0.
I [Matt Mullenweg] originally thought Stallman started counting with zero instead of one because he's a geek. He is, but that wasn't the reason. Freedoms one, two, and three came first, but later he wanted to add something to supersede all of them. So: freedom zero. The geekness is a happy accident.
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Free Software Definition is a policy document written by Richard Stallman and published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). For those who accept the authority of the FSF, it defines free software as software that grants users the freedom to use, study, share, and modify the software. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech", not "free of charge". The earliest known publication of the definition appeared in the February 1986 edition of the now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin published by the FSF. Since 1996, the official version of the document has been maintained in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. As of March 2025, the definition had seen 27 major revisions since it was originally published online and it had been translated into 65 languages. The FSF also publishes a list of licenses that meets this definition.
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that gives users the right to use, share, modify, and distribute the software — modified or not — to everyone and provides the means to exercise those rights using the software's source code. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free software and open-source software. The rights guaranteed by FOSS originate from the "Four Essential Freedoms" of The Free Software Definition and the criteria of The Open Source Definition. All FOSS has publicly available source code, but not all source-available software is FOSS. FOSS is the opposite of proprietary software, which is licensed restrictively or has undisclosed source code. The historical precursor to FOSS was the hobbyist and academic public domain software ecosystem of the 1960s to 1980s. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses have been adopted by many software packages. Reasons for using FOSS include decreased software costs, increased security against malware, stability, privacy, opportunities for educational usage, and giving users more control over their own hardware. The free software movement and the open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production, adoption and promotion of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the equivalent term free/libre and open-source software. FOSS is supported by a loosely associated movement of multiple organizations, foundations, communities and individuals who share basic philosophical perspectives and collaborate practically, but may diverge in detail questions.
The Definition of Free Cultural Works is a project that evaluates and recommends compatible free content licenses. Launched in 2006 by Creative Commons' Erik Möller in collaboration with Richard Stallman, Lawrence Lessig, Benjamin Mako Hill, and others, it was created to establish a clear standard for defining free content. The project is used as a reference by the Wikimedia Foundation in its licensing policy. In 2008, the Creative Commons Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike licenses were formally designated as "Approved for Free Cultural Works." The Definition of Free Cultural Works has since become closely aligned with other open content frameworks, including the Open Knowledge Foundation's Open Definition, the Open Source Definition, and the Free Software Definition.
This is a list of free and open-source software (FOSS) packages, computer software licensed under free software licenses and open-source licenses. Software that fits the Free Software Definition may be more appropriately called free software; the GNU project in particular objects to their works being referred to as open-source. For more information about the philosophical background for open-source software, see free software movement and Open Source Initiative. However, nearly all software meeting the Free Software Definition also meets the Open Source Definition and vice versa. A small fraction of the software that meets either definition is listed here. Some of the open-source applications are also the basis of commercial products, shown in the List of commercial open-source applications and services.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
