User’s FAQ on free software

This is not a formal FAQ on free software, but as in case of “How to learn GNU/Linux?” there are many more frequently asked questions about free software as a philosophy and as software. A formal information on free software, the free software foundation and the GNU are available on www.gnu.org

So… here come the questions I had to answer the most
1. What is free software
According to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), “free software” is a matter of liberty and not price. FSF also defined the four freedoms of software.

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements
  to the public, so that the whole community benefits

A free software has all the freedoms listed above. None of the above freedoms are about the cost of software. A free software can be sold, but to meet two (second and fourth) of the prescribed four freedoms, the source code will have to be distributed too!

2. What are the advantages of going free
You like the software? Go give it to your friend and no one is going to sue you for that. That is not all, you have the source code and can modify the program to suit your needs, audit the source to make sure the code is bug free. In simple words - “do what you want, change any part of it and share it with your friends”.

3. What is the difference between open-source and free-software.
As far as I understand, free-software can be seen as a significant subset of the open-source software. Open source softwares are those softwares that give the source code, but its not necessary that you get all the freedoms too. A necessary and sufficient condition for a software to be open software is availability of source code, but for a software to be free, its necessary that the users get all the four freedoms of software.

4. Quality - Is free-software comparable to the commercial software?
Many people mis-understand the concept of free-software. Free software need not be free in terms of price and in most cases free-software is of much better quality. As an example search for comparisions between Firefox and Internet Explorer, between Apache HTTP Server and Microsoft IIS server, etc.