Just over a week ago, the the third revision of the GNU Public Licence was released. This is a software licence designed to protect free software, ensuring that users and developers are free to use and develop the software as they wish, while ensuring that any modifications or improvements made remain accessible to the free software community.

In an age where software development and computer technology is so governed by copyright and legal restrictions, the knock-on effects that this legal licence will have mean that it is probably a more significant release than new versions of most software applications.

Having already talked about Free software and the commons (and still with a few more things to say about it in the future), I thought it would be worth talking about exactly what “Free software” is and what it means to software users and developers. (more…)

July 9th, 2007 | Freedom | 2 comments