Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, which is also known as FSF, is an organization that was established back in the year 1983. It starts the operations along with the GNU project. It was a professor who worked at MIT named Richard Stallman, who worked on the initiative to come up with Free Software Foundation. Along with the experience of Richard Stallman, while working as a student in projects where free software applications were exchanged freely, he came up with the idea of developing the Free Software Foundation. He wanted to make sure that people who deserve to get access to certain software are provided with access, without any restrictions. His efforts became successful and Free Software Foundation was established in the year 1983. 

What does Free Software Foundation do? 

One of the biggest achievements of the Free Software Foundation was the development of a complete operating system. This operating system was none other than Unix. It is pretty much similar to a GNU. The first version of Unix was launched for the people back in the year 1996. It could become a complete operating system because a kernel was added to it at a later stage.

The word “Free” in Free Software Foundation means that there is no charge. The Free Software Foundation is not charging any money for the initial distribution of the GNU. Any interested person will be able to go ahead and acquire it without spending any money out of pocket.

The main objective of the Free Software Foundation is to ensure that people, as well as the society, will be able to benefit from free software that is available for them to use. On the other hand, it ensures that all the people are provided with the right to analyze the source code of a program and get a better understanding of how it is working. Moreover, they tend to redistribute and then sell the improved version of free software to other people as well. This will provide them the opportunity to get the maximum returns out of available software. Along with that, people can go ahead and continue to reuse software without encountering any restrictions.

Free Software Foundation provides users the chance to study, modify, and share software

Free Software Foundation is not just engaged with the mission of providing free access to software to the people. It is also providing opportunities for people to study, share, and modify the software according to the needs that they have. The main reason why it is called free software is that users can get whatever they want for free.

The decision that a person can take to go ahead and use free software would be an ethical and political choice. However, it comes along with numerous benefits for the students and all other people who are interested in learning more about software. It will ensure their right to go ahead with learning what software is all about. On the other hand, they are provided an ideal environment to share what they learn about software along with others as well. No matter what, free software has been able to become the foundation within a learning society. This is providing freedom for the people to go ahead with sharing their knowledge in a specific way so that others will be able to grab it. It will also offer numerous benefits for the other people who are using the software. 

As of now, we will be able to see how a large number of software applications deny the freedom of the users. These software applications are not just denying the freedom of the users, but they are also denying the benefits that people will be able to get at the end of the day. While keeping that in mind, it is worthy to understand how the entire program carried out by Free Software Foundation is working.

Some of the software are coming with device limitations. Even if we are using multiple devices at home, we will not be able to use the software that we bought on all those devices. If the software is limited only to one device, we will only be able to use that on one device. In case if we need to use the same software on another device, we will have to go ahead and purchase it. Otherwise, we will get caught for going against the terms and conditions of using the software. As a result, there is a possibility to end up getting fined. You will be able to see all these limitations included within the license agreement of the software. You can go through this agreement before you install the software on your computer.

There are different entities behind proprietary software, who will keep on spying on the activities that you do. Hence, they will go ahead and restrict you from sharing your software along with others. Since our computers are containing our personal and sensitive information, using such proprietary software can lead us to some risks as well. 

Free Software Foundation continues to take the free software movement forward 

One of the best things that we can see about the Free Software Foundation is that it is responsible for taking forward the free software movement to greater heights. This will eventually benefit all the people who are looking forward to gaining access to software for free. 

The future of the Free Software Foundation seems bright. As of now, a large number of skilled ethical programmers around the world have started to volunteer and commit their ideas of sharing and writing software with each other. It will be possible for people to experience the benefits that come along with Free Software Foundation in the future as well. For example, we will be able to see how some new and advanced alternatives to the UNIX operating system will be made available in the future as well. 

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