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FREE SOFTWARE MENU

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WELCOME TO THE FREE SOFTWARE AREA

Brian Grainger

brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk

Throughout the life of ICPUG, from its earliest days in the last century, it has always reported on the newest mass market computing areas. When doing so, it has usually had criticism from those seeing fewer items on their favourite topic.

I am going to continue the tradition by starting this new area on the ICPUG web site, for all things to do with Free Software.

Events of the last year have shown an enormous increase in the interest around Free Software and GNU/Linux in particular. So far, this has primarily been in the server arena, but I believe there is now a very good chance that the desktop Microsoft monopoly will now be infiltrated. There are still some hurdles to overcome but, in the ICPUG tradition of being at the forefront, this area will now report on the hot topic of Free Software.

In this introduction I want to explain a little of what this area will cover and some of the associated terminology for those who may not have come across it before.

There first thing to say is that Free Software is NOT necessary free of charge. The word Free relates to freedom, the ability of users of the software to do what they like with it. This includes altering it and redistributing, without fear of retribution from a 'copyright' holder. Of course, to allow a user to alter software means that the source code must also be distributed freely. The prime principle of the Free Software movement is that when such modified software is created its users must be granted the same rights. To make this distinction of 'free' as in freedom, and not 'free' as in no charge, I will always capitalise the expression 'Free Software'. This area will report on Free Software, not free software.

Another term that is heard a lot is Open Source. This is not the same as Free Software. Rather than being a description of the software, it is a description of the method used to develop it. The traditional method of software development, as practised by Microsoft, is behind closed doors. Although producers take users wishes into account, to varying degrees, ultimately you get what you are given, when you are given it! Open Source software is developed by a community of developers, usually co-ordinated in some way. When a user requests a change then someone within the community may be assigned the task to implement it. Alternatively, the change may be carried out and presented to the co-ordinator for inclusion. Open Source software can be Free Software but it need not be. In any event this area will also report on Open Source software.

The origin of the Free Software movement was the development of GNU. GNU is a Free Operating System that is/was developed under the co-ordination of Richard Stallman, the Father of the Free Software movement.

GNU is short for 'GNU is Not UNIX' so essentially it is a UNIX like operating system but developed with the philosophy of Free Software. UNIX is a collection of utilities built around a central core, or kernel. The GNU project initially concerned itself with replacing the UNIX utilities with their own versions. Other utilities were added such as the window system, called X. The one thing that the GNU project did not work on was the kernel. They used an existing partially complete kernel from an American University. When they tried to complete the kernel they found it was more difficult than they thought. However, as luck would have it, another guy had solved the problem!

At the time when the GNU project was looking for a complete kernel, Linus Torvalds had announced the one he had created. This was ultimately to be called Linux. The GNU project took this Linux kernel to complete their operating system. So GNU/Linux was born and this is the product that we are beginning to hear so much about.

In fact what we usually hear about is Linux. This is a great source of irritation to Richard Stallman because the GNU part of it has been forgotten. He requests people to call it GNU/Linux and for this opening article, at least, I am deferring to his wishes. I cannot guarantee I will continue to do so!

A lot of Free Software is developed for GNU/Linux and I guess much of the discussion in this area will concentrate on this. However, software distributed under the GNU Public Licence (GPL), or similar, that works with other operating systems will also be included.

There is one last item to explain and that is the logo at the top right of this page that I will use to characterise pages in this area. I think most of you will recognise that it is a penguin. However, it is a rather special penguin. The penguin is called Tux and it is the image that was derived to symbolise Linux. I am going to risk incurring the wrath here of Richard Stallman because really I should have a gnu and a penguin. There just isn't enough room for it! Now if someone can come up with Tux's head and a gnu's body or vice versa ...

Welcome to the world of Free Software and GNU/Linux.

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