Free and Software – definitions.

The fact that the word free in english has more than one meaning makes a preliminary explanation of what ‘free software’ means necessary.

The ‘free’ in free software refers to freedom more than to price (Winstanley, 2003). The Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman in 1985, refers to four freedoms: freedom to use, to distribute, to examine, and to modify the software. That is the ‘trade mark’, as there are other programs that are freely available, but are not free to examine and modify.
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