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You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you mayhave obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got yourcopies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software,even to sell copies.
The free software definition presents the criteria for whether aparticular software program qualifies as free software. From time totime we revise this definition, to clarify it or to resolve questionsabout subtle issues. See the History sectionbelow for a list of changes that affect the definition of freesoftware.
A program is free software if it gives users adequately all of thesefreedoms. Otherwise, it is nonfree. While we can distinguish variousnonfree distribution schemes in terms of how far they fall short ofbeing free, we consider them all equally unethical.
In any given scenario, these freedoms must apply to whatever codewe plan to make use of, or lead others to make use of. For instance,consider a program A which automatically launches a program B tohandle some cases. If we plan to distribute A as it stands, thatimplies users will need B, so we need to judge whether both A and Bare free. However, if we plan to modify A so that it doesn't use B,only A needs to be free; B is not pertinent to that plan.
We want to invite everyone to use the GNU system, including businessesand their workers. That requires allowing commercial use. We hopethat free replacement programs will supplant comparable proprietaryprograms, but they can't do that if businesses are forbidden to usethem. We want commercial products that contain software to includethe GNU system, and that would constitute commercial distribution fora price. Commercial development of free software is no longerunusual; such free commercial software is very important. Paid,professional support for free software fills an important need.
Thus, to exclude commercial use, commercial development or commercialdistribution would hobble the free software community and obstruct itspath to success. We must conclude that a program licensed with suchrestrictions does not qualify as free software.
A free program must offer the four freedoms to any would-be user thatobtains a copy of the software, who has complied thus far with theconditions of the free license covering the software in any previousdistribution of it. Putting some of the freedoms off limits to someusers, or requiring that users pay, in money or in kind, to exercisethem, is tantamount to not granting the freedoms in question, and thusrenders the program nonfree.
The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of personor organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind ofoverall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about itwith the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it isthe user's purpose that matters, not the developer'spurpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes,and if you distribute it to other people, they are then free to run it fortheir purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on them.
The freedom to run the program as you wish means that you are notforbidden or stopped from making it run. This has nothing to do with whatfunctionality the program has, whether it is technically capable offunctioning in any given environment, or whether it is useful for anyparticular computing activity.
Whether a change constitutes an improvement is a subjective matter.If your right to modify a program is limited, in substance, to changes thatsomeone else considers an improvement, that program is not free.
Freedom to distribute (freedoms 2 and 3) means you are free toredistribute copies, either with or without modifications, eithergratis or charging a fee for distribution, toanyone anywhere. Being free to do thesethings means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or payfor permission to do so.
You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use themprivately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that theyexist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required tonotify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.
Freedom 3 includes the freedom to release your modified versionsas free software. A free license may also permit other ways ofreleasing them; in other words, it does not have to bea copyleft license. However, alicense that requires modified versions to be nonfree does not qualifyas a free license.
The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executableforms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified andunmodified versions. (Distributing programs in runnable form is necessaryfor conveniently installable free operating systems.) It is OK if thereis no way to produce a binary or executable form for a certain program(since some languages don't support that feature), but you must have thefreedom to redistribute such forms should you find or develop a way tomake them.
Certain kinds of rules about the manner of distributing freesoftware are acceptable, when they don't conflict with the centralfreedoms. For example, copyleft(very simply stated) is the rule that when redistributing the program,you cannot add restrictions to deny other people the central freedoms.This rule does not conflict with the central freedoms; rather itprotects them.
Rules about how to package a modified version are acceptable,if they don't substantively limit your freedom to release modifiedversions, or your freedom to make and use modified versions privately.Thus, it is acceptable for the license to require that you change thename of the modified version, remove a logo, or identify yourmodifications as yours. As long as these requirements are not soburdensome that they effectively hamper you from releasing yourchanges, they are acceptable; you're already making other changes tothe program, so you won't have trouble making a few more.
A special issue arises when a license requires changing the name bywhich the program will be invoked from other programs. Thateffectively hampers you from releasing your changed version so that itcan replace the original when invoked by those other programs. Thissort of requirement is acceptable only if there's a suitable aliasingfacility that allows you to specify the original program's name as analias for the modified version.
Sometimes government export control regulationsand trade sanctions can constrain your freedom to distribute copies ofprograms internationally. Software developers do not have the power toeliminate or override these restrictions, but what they can and must dois refuse to impose them as conditions of use of the program. In thisway, the restrictions will not affect activities and people outside thejurisdictions of these governments. Thus, free software licensesmust not require obedience to any nontrivial export regulations as acondition of exercising any of the essential freedoms.
Merely mentioning the existence of export regulations, without makingthem a condition of the license itself, is acceptable since it doesnot restrict users. If an export regulation is actually trivial forfree software, then requiring it as a condition is not an actualproblem; however, it is a potential problem, since a later change inexport law could make the requirement nontrivial and thus render thesoftware nonfree.
In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be permanent andirrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of thesoftware has the power to revoke the license, or retroactively addrestrictions to its terms, without your doing anything wrong to givecause, the software is not free.
Most free software licenses are based on copyright, and there are limitson what kinds of requirements can be imposed through copyright. If acopyright-based license respects freedom in the ways described above, itis unlikely to have some other sort of problem that we never anticipated(though this does happen occasionally). However, some free softwarelicenses are based on contracts, and contracts can impose a much largerrange of possible restrictions. That means there are many possible wayssuch a license could be unacceptably restrictive and nonfree.
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