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[Fsfe-uk] Why FS is a Good Thing: Draft 3
From: |
Ramin Nakisa |
Subject: |
[Fsfe-uk] Why FS is a Good Thing: Draft 3 |
Date: |
Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:51:25 +0000 |
Brian suggested that we boil this down to just 5 bullet points for
government, business, schools... I started to do this and found that
they didn't differ much except in terms of priorities. So I gave up.
Here's draft 3 with Ralph's suggestions:
\documentclass{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{small}
Science owes its explosive growth over the past century to the free
and open exchange of ideas. As Isaac Newton said in a letter to his
colleague Robert Hooke dated 5 February 1676, ``If I have seen
further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.'' Free
Software is in the process of recreating this explosion of ideas in
the world of Information Technology. The Free Software Foundation,
founded by Richard Stallman in 1984, exists to write and support
Free Software through it's spearhead project known as GNU (GNU's Not
Unix) which is a collection of programs for a Unix-like operating
system, and a software licence known as the GNU General Public
Licence (GPL).
Free Software such as that distributed under the GPL ensures four
freedoms: (i) the freedom to run the program, for any purpose, (ii)
the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your
needs, (iii) the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help
others and (iv) the freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
The Association for Free Software supports the use of Free Software
because:
\begin{itemize}
\item Most software is written in-house and never sold, and in this
case software patents are a hindrance. Free Software is not a
commodity, it is more like infrastructure -- freely available to all
businesses and an enabler of progress and innovation.
\item Free Software is often distributed for no cost. This typically
saves around 20\% of the cost of every computer in an organisation,
because, although hardware has become consistently cheaper, personal
computer operating systems have increased in price.
\item Free Software is bankruptcy-proof. It is usually stored on
globally available software repositories and will outlive any
company or organisation that created it. While the community of
people that use and maintain the project continue to exist, the
software will persist and develop.
\item Support for Free Software is often much better than support for
proprietary software. Mailing lists, bulletin boards and newsgroups
exist where users post questions and receive prompt and helpful
replies. People are encouraged to report bugs and these are quickly
fixed.
\item Many companies have invested heavily in Free Software. IBM has
invested over \$1 billion in Linux, and now sells many of its
computers, ranging from laptops to million-pound mainframes, with Linux
pre-installed.
\item Thousands of Free Software projects exist (see the Free Software
directory at http://www.gnu.org/directory/). A typical installation
of Linux that you would buy or download from the Internet for your
personal computer would include:
\begin{description}
\item [GNU] which provides the bulk of basic utility programs.
\item [KDE, Gnome, GNUstep, and XFCE] a selection of desktop
environments with attractive and easy to use graphical interfaces.
\item [OpenOffice] a word-processing, email, spreadsheet and
presentation package that is compatible and visually similar to
Microsoft Office.
\item [Mozilla] an Internet browser.
\item [Apache] industry standard software used to run 57\% of the
World's web sites.
\item [Linux] an operating system kernel, so called because it is
central to its operation.
\end{description}
\end{itemize}
\end{small}
\end{document}
- [Fsfe-uk] Why FS is a Good Thing: Draft 3,
Ramin Nakisa <=