The free software movement is a social and political movement with the goal of ensuring software users' four basic freedoms: the freedom to run their software, to study and change their software, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. Although drawing on traditions and philosophies among members of the 1970s hacker culture, Richard Stallman formally founded the movement in 1983 by launching the GNU Project.
The free software philosophy at the core of the movement drew on the essence and incidental elements of what was called hacker culture by many computer users in the 1970s, among other sources.
Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the movement.
Read more about Free Software Movement: Philosophy, Legislation, Subgroups and Schisms, Measures of Progress
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or movement:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)