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Nicolas Peyresaubes

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• Publié par: Fiwyong
• Nombre de lectures: 901
• Langue: English

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To be or not to be FreeSoftware

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Index Definition :..........................................................................................................4 Legal Overview :.................................................................................................5 History :..............................................................................................................6 Phantom menace.............................................................................................6 A new Hope.....................................................................................................6 Main Organisations :...........................................................................................7 The FSF ..........................................................................................................7 APRIL .............................................................................................................7 Free Softwares : .................................................................................................8 Operating Systems :........................................................................................8 Linux:...........................................................................................................8 BSD s:........................................................................................................10 Nostalgia :.................................................................................................10 Windows forever:.......................................................................................10 Office Applications : .....................................................................................10 Office Suite................................................................................................10 PAO............................................................................................................11 Project Management.................................................................................12 Multimedia Applications :.............................................................................12 Graphics....................................................................................................12 3D Software & Animations........................................................................13 Video Editing.............................................................................................13 Files encoding : to be or not to be .... Free..............................................13 Internet Clients :...........................................................................................13 Browsers....................................................................................................13 e-mails ......................................................................................................14 Geographic Information Systems (GIS)........................................................14 GRASS ......................................................................................................15 OpenJump .................................................................................................15 uDig...........................................................................................................15 Quantum GIS ............................................................................................15 DIVAGIS ...................................................................................................15 Migratio.....................................................................................................15 GvSIG.........................................................................................................15 SAGA .........................................................................................................15 WEB Applications..........................................................................................15 Apache ......................................................................................................16 Mysql.........................................................................................................16 PostgreSQL................................................................................................16 PHP ...........................................................................................................16 Groupware.................................................................................................16 Content management system (CMS).........................................................17 Surveys......................................................................................................17 A Gnu in windows and vice versa..................................................................17 Virtualization.............................................................................................18 Emulation..................................................................................................18

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All about FreeSoftwares...................................................................................19 Anti-FS point of view.....................................................................................19 Pro-FS point of view......................................................................................19 FreeSoftwares & Open Source.....................................................................20 Free Spirit.....................................................................................................20 FreeSoftware – what is it ?!..............................................................................22 Why do Freesoftwares are a must to have ?.................................................22 Freedom and Independence......................................................................22 An efficient support...................................................................................22 Made especially for you ............................................................................22 State is switching to Free Technologies.......................................................22 OpenOffice in Agriculture Ministry...............................................................23 Interior Ministry and Free Mail.................................................................23 Central Administration, gendarmerie & OpenOffice.................................23 Ministry of Foreign Affairs........................................................................24 National Assembly.........................................................................................24 Private Companies........................................................................................24 Amazon, Google, Ebay, Yahoo, Free .........................................................24 Le Tigre.....................................................................................................24 Movies Industry.........................................................................................25 FreeSoftwares & Tourism.................................................................................26 Acogit.........................................................................................................26 Gnu & Penguin ... for a world domination !?....................................................27 What's wrong ?!.............................................................................................27 Mentalities.................................................................................................27 Migration...................................................................................................27 To a Free World.............................................................................................28 Companies.................................................................................................28 You, everybody .........................................................................................28 Impact on Economy.......................................................................................29 Some facts.................................................................................................29 From Free softwares to Free everything .........................................................31 Open Source beer - Vores Øl.........................................................................31 OpenCola.......................................................................................................31 Art and Free – GNUArt..................................................................................32 Bibliography & sources.....................................................................................33 Annexe..............................................................................................................34 GPL V2...........................................................................................................34 GPL v3 ..........................................................................................................46

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Definition :

« Think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer » A Free Software can be owned, used, redistributed and modified by anybody without any restriction. Theses rights are given by a Free licence, but this kind of software are not always free in term of money. Most of the time it's not the software that has to be paid for, but some special services, installation help, set-up or personal tuning/modification. Free Softwares must absolutely not be taken for freewares or softwares fallen in the public domain. Liberties given by FreeSoftwares are much more wider and restricted than the simple access to software sources. The simple access to sources is the main characteristic of Open Source softwares. But in reality, the Open Source softwares notion as it's defined by the Open Source Initiative is very very close to the Free Software one. A Free Licence is a license that can apply to anything to make a free content of it, giving to the final user some rights for use, modifications, retailing and inclusion into other softwares. Here are the Free Software four commandements : ● Right 0 : freedom to execute without any restriction ● Right 1 : freedom of software analysis. ➢ This implies sources access. ● Right 2 : freedom to redistribute the software ➢ this implies the freedom to resell the software. ● 3 : freedom to improve the initial software and to redistribute theRight new versions. ➢ This implies source code access ➢ to developer Communities creation for softwareThis help improvement. ➢ This allows THEFORK, a new way to build a software from an unique base, or in case of problem between programmers of the main project a new branch of development can be created.

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Legal Overview : FreeSoftwares as others software (except public domain ones) are protected by a “copyright”. FreeSoftwares' s specificity is that the softwares' creator are renouncing to any kind of exclusivity or rights given by traditional copyrights. The software goes with a Free License naming all the rights and duties given to the final user. This license is named Gnu Public License. The right to redistribute a Free Software only apply if the whole software is redistributed in the same terms named in the GPL of the initial software. This license is told being “Viral”, because if it allows the merge between Free Software and proprietary software, it only authorize the redistribution under the terms of GPL. For proprietary Softwares creators this license is freedom killer, but in a larger view it help to preserve FreeSoftwares from proprietary companies who wouldn't hesitate a second to steel everything to integrate it in their products, to finally put a copyright on them UNESCO registered the Free Software Foundation and many FreeSoftwares as a world gift.

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History :

 Phantom menace At the beginning of the times (in the 50's), IBM was providing the hardware part, but the software part was a community work where customers were raising funds for (software) project in which they could be interested and next the software was released to all freely. Till the beginning of the 80's, operating systems source code was provided with “computers”. Softwares were given to buyers for a large amount of money with analysis and modifications rights. In the 70's source codes began to close and this increased with the arrival of Personal Computers (root hackers were replaced by basic users). Source code closing and changes occurring in mentalities allowed to softwares editors to impose their own standards when, till then, nothing had been standardized nor normed. Each constructor had his own specificities. Bill Gates and Paul Allen (co-founders of micro-soft – actual Microsoft) are so pining everything introducing the exploitation license applied to softwares : at this time they sold their software (Altair Basic) for a cheap price (3000$) to MITS (company making the Altair, first north American personal computer) but remained main owners of it, asking 35$ per Altair Basic provided with a computer. In 1976, things are not going fast enough for them and mentalities are too slow to change (piracy of Altair Basic was the main sport in these times), so Bill Gates wrote an open letter to the Altair Community telling them to stop copying their software. Little by little , the copyright started to apply on softwares (something absolutely new). Since this time, softwares are sold independently from any hardware, and it's absolutely forbidden to analyse, attempt to correct or improve them. This is the end of an era.

 A new Hope To face this situation, Richard Stallman build the notion of free software in the first mid of the 80's and then make it popular with the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation. In 1984, the same Richard Stallman starts the creation of a free Operating System named GNU (quickly Linux kernel is used. The Hurd/GNU project restarted recently). Since 1985 Richard Stallman, after quitting his job (at the MIT and Xerox), have full time job with the project of his life. The General Public License GNU is also known under the acronym GPL and has been written with the help of an International Lawyer Eben Moglen. In opposition to the copyright the term copyleft have also been invented for the occasion by Richard Stallman himself. Since this time Richard Stallman is seen in FSF as a “modern knight” fighting for freedom to share softwares, medias, informations etc...etc... his action takes place every where on earth. He got on strike in France in 2006 to show his opposition to the DADVSI law.

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Main Organisations :

The FSF Richard Stallman founded it in 1985. This association's goal is to bring funds to the GNU Project and Free Software Community. Funds are raised with the help of contributors, goodies selling ( T-shirts, magnets, stickers, ...). Some sisters organisations are also existing : FSF Europe (created on the 10 th of March 2001), FSF India (2002) and FSF Latin America. In April 2001Frédéric Couchet launched FSF France. He also is the APRIL founder.

APRIL   Association for Promotion and Research for Free Softwares (Association pour la Promotion et la Recherche en Informatique Libre) has been created in 1996 by Frédéric Couchet. This is a very active association in France and in the Francophony more generally. It's goals are : • Promote Free Softwares for Professionals, Institutions and all citizens; • Make people concious about the advantages of Open Standards; • Getting political decisions to improve use of Free Softwares and Technologies; • Helping to improve Knowledge's sharing.

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Free Softwares : These softwares are created by independents programmers or communities of programmers everywhere on earth. Softwares released under GPL are belonging to all categories possibles (accounting, office, studies, music, photo, etc...etc...). Success encountered by Linux in the 90's has been a huge boost for many softwares to be released under GPL.

Operating Systems : The Operating System is a software directly used by the computer and makes a human computer interface. In the proprietary world, as famous operating systems you have Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOSX , Sun Solaris, HP HPUX, IBM AIX etc...etc... for most of them, these systems are very expensive and are only running on very specifics architectures. Windows operating systems are quite unstable, unsafe (the fog over source code might hide some privacy intrusions or some back doors to access to confidential data's ), expensive. Against that some Free Operating systems are existing !!

Linux: http://www.linux.org It's surely the most famous of them. He is pretending to be a concurrent to Microsoft Windows in Personal Computing but also to big systems in administrations or companies. It can be used as Desktop computer but also as a very reliable servers (web, databases, files, mails, applications etc...) The use of the name “Linux” as an OS is a language extrapolation. In fact, Linux is just the system kernel name. The kernel directly “speak” with the hardware and allows to softwares to communicate with the hardware : it's a hardware to software interface. Linux is born on the 5 th thanks to a Finish Student namedof October 1991 Linux Torvalds (Linux = Linus Unix) who decided to make (on his free time) a Unix system running on classical PCs. Nearly immediately his project has been a success and hundreds, thousands of developers worked on it all around the world. In our days, the number of developers working more or less directly on Linux can be evaluated to millions of persons : everyone of them is helping improving kernel and applications running on it. Linus Torvalds is still the Keeper of the Gates : he manages the Linux project, and tells which modification has to be added, removed, which direction the kernel has to take. Linux Symbols Tux (a manchot pygmy) has been chosen next to a contest in 1996. Linux is now available on a very large number of different architectures (something impossible for proprietary OS): x86, IA64, AMD64, PA-RISC, MIPS, S/390, Sparc, strongARM, Alpha, m68k etc...etc... A lonely kernel being a bit useless for a human being normally built, GNU/Linux is being installed as a distribution. The so called distributions are packages made of a Linux Kernel of course and hundreds of various

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applications such as graphic user interfaces (xorg), configuration tools, databases, video, audio, graphics, servers applications etc... Differences between distributions are residing into chosen softwares, kernel version (kernel can also be modified by distribution's owners) and also to some tools added to help the final user or to make administration easier (all of these tools are of course released under GPL and can be used by other distributions). The oldest version still active arrived on earth on the 17 th of July 1993 and is named Slackware. It's a very lightweight distro mainly used for server purposes. It has been created and is still maintained by a lonely man Patrick J. Volkerding. http://www.slackware.org

In August 1993 the Debian GNU Linux has been released for public. It's the FSF's official Gnu Linux and the Debian project has been directly launched by Richard Stallman. Each new version is named from a Toy Story character (Woody, Buzz, Potato ... Etch is the last one). Debian Gnu Linux can be use as well as desktop (mainly with Ubuntu a Debian's fork) or server. http://www.debian.org

Redhat is the first commercial company to make a business out of Linux and the first release appeared ending 1994. Today, Redhat provide a commercial Linux with support (mainly for big companies) being named Redhat Linux, but also a free community Linux named Fedora Core. Redhat is actually rated in the Nasdaq. http://www.redhat.com

Mandriva (ex Mandrake) is a French distribution released for the first time in 1998 and based on redhat 5.1. Since then, Mandriva has its own evolution and in term of usability has become better than Redhat. They just miss good commercials to be a real concurrent for redhat in companies world. It's one of the easiest distribution to use and install. It can be used as desktop and servers. It also have been the first distribution to provide a full graphic installation program allowing the use of non latin alphabet : the installation program exists in 73 languages such as Russian, Greek, Chinese, Basque etc... http://www.mandriva.org

On Internet you can find hundreds not to say thousands of Linux distributions being original ones, or just forks from others. Some are generalists, other more specialized in music composition, or video editing, or gaming ... anybody can realise its own distribution.

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