Free and Open Source Software
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What is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1).Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies(freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to run the program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job and purpose, without being required to communicate about it with the developer or any other specific entity. In this freedom, it is the user's purpose that matters, not the developer's purpose; you as a user are free to run the program for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, they is then free to run it for their purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on them.
Why FOSS?
Best use of limited resources – the economics of free software
Free software does not forbid selling and buying copies, but it means that the school system, after acquiring a copy, is free to make more and redistribute them - for instance, to all the schools. The schools do not need to pay for permission to use these copies. This creates the opportunity for great cost savings. In developing countries like India, there is really no reason to spend public money on proprietary software when equivalent free software is available.
The social argument for Free Software
- Free software is created and modified by communities of students, volunteers, employees and entrepreneurs working together in a spirit of collaboration, while proprietary software is produced by business organisations only.
- Most of the free software has been produced in this collaborative manner by people acting in a spirit of contribution and collaboration across the world. Hence free software can also be called “Samudaya Software”. Thus the use of free software is completely in line with the emphasis on development in public sector.
- Free software has other important economic benefits: development and independence.
Promoting the local development through “Swadeshi” software
What support can the Free Software Movement offer to the Government?
In Kerala and in other states, Governments have worked with civil society organisations associated with the Free software movement to create local networks of software developers, trainers and support staff. If we look at Gujarat in specific the Free software movement has sown its seeds quiet well (for example the GNU/Linux operating system has already been developed in Gujarati by Gujarat based organizations) and there are many organisations who can work to support the efforts of the Government in promoting the use and creation of Free software, local language software.
The Government has a very crucial role to play in supporting the work of such communities in building a world where software and knowledge is free. Since Government is the protector of public interest, it must also strongly support the initiatives to build the ecosystem for free software, such that user support, training, development facilities are available throughout the public sphere.
Why FOSS is not yet popular?
- There are several obstacles in the adoption and promotion of Free Software.
- These include issues relating to
- support and maintanance
- user training
- user friendliness of the applications
- Customers are not told about possibilities of opting for free operating system and office applications which can reduce the cost of purchase.
- Also there is a impression amongst many users of proprietary software that free software applications are not user friendly, support and training is not available, drivers are not available and some applications run only on proprietary software platforms.
These impressions are not entirely true, though many of them pertain to the larger issue of the creation and sustenance of a 'Eco-System' for free software.
Public Software alternatives to Proprietary Software
There are free and open source softwares (public software alternatives to proprietary softwares) available for every purpose. These softwares can be installed on Windows as well. To know more about how to download and install these softwares, click here.There are other GNU/Linux distributions as well - Debian, Fedora, Mandrake etc.
| Application Area | Proprietary Software | Free Software |
|---|---|---|
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows | Ubuntu GNU- Linux |
| Spreadsheet | Microsoft Office- Excel | OpenOffice.org Word Processor |
| Presentation | Microsoft Office- Powerpoint | OpenOffice.org Presentation |
| E-Mail Client | Microsoft Outlook | Mozilla Thunderbird |
| Internet Browser | Microsoft Internet Explorer | Mozilla Firefox |
| Archiving | Winzip | 7-Zip, Peapod |
| Media | Windows Media Player | VLC Player, MPlayer |
| Graphics | Adobe Photoshop | GIMP, Inkscape |
| Adobe Acrobat | PDF-Edit |
