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Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software – modified or not – to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free software and open-source software .
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. [1]
Free Software Foundation (FSF) – founded 1985; began as a development center for the GNU Project. It currently advocates for free software and against proprietary software and formats; and maintains and legally enforces the GNU General Public License. It also created the Free Software Definition.
Free software from a BBS was the motivating force for consumers to purchase a computer equipped with a modem, so as to acquire software at no cost. The success of shareware games, including id Software hits Commander Keen and Doom, depended in part on the BBS community's willingness to redistribute them from one BBS to another across North ...
In the mid-1980s, the GNU project produced copyleft free-software licenses for each of its software packages. An early such license (the "GNU Emacs Copying Permission Notice") was used for GNU Emacs in 1985, [5] which was revised into the "GNU Emacs General Public License" in late 1985, and clarified in March 1987 and February 1988.
Free-software licenses that use "weak" copyleft include the GNU Lesser General Public License and the Mozilla Public License. The GNU General Public License is an example of a license implementing strong copyleft. An even stronger copyleft license is the AGPL, which requires the publishing of the source code for software as a service use cases.
The Free Software Definition, written by Richard Stallman and published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), defines free software as being software that ensures that the users have freedom in using, studying, sharing and modifying that software. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech," not of "free of charge."
Traditionally, software was distributed in the form of binary object code that could not be understood or modified by the user, [1] but could be downloaded and run. The user bought a perpetual license to use a particular version of the software. [29]