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Free Software & IFSO 2005-11-18
Speakers notes from Glenn Strong's introduction to Free Software
and Irish Free Software Organisation.
- IFSO is a membership organisation;
- advocating use of FS in Ireland
- ensuring the legal framework to write and use FS exists
- June 2003: several groups begin coming together with shared concern
for pending EU legislation, and an interest in FS. Work on swpats.
- Jan 2004: IFSO launched (20th anniversary of GNU).
- associate organisation of FSFE. Focus of FS work in Ireland.
- much work participating in discussions about european law; 1 committee
member is based now in Brussels and works closely with fsfe & MEP's
- Context for our work: what is FS?
- Not about money
- Software Libre (liberty), open source. We prefer the term "free"
- Four freedoms:
- Run the program. Any purpose, no further permission needed.
- Study, adapt to needs. Find out what program really
does. sensitive data. adapt - program, or hire a
programmer. Need source for this (hence "open
source") but this is only 1 freedom.
- redistribute copies. No compulsory charge. Share, build
community.
- Improve, release improvements. make own versions, take over
development.
- Freedoms embodied in licences. GPL, BSD, MIT, etc.
- No compulsion. We don't say you must do this, but we want to be
free do do it.
- It's these freedoms we are worried about when we talk of
swpats.