Download - Intro to Free Software | Swecha
Introduction to
Free Software
Agenda
● Software freedom
● Free Software in education
● Development model
● Free software adoption
● You can help
Software Freedom
The Moral Dilema
● Friend asks for a copy of a software you own
– You either break the law and make an illegal copy
– Refuse to help your friend
Proprietary Software
● Control your computer
Removethat
Software
No,Keep it
Proprietary Software
● Take away what you own
Amazon
kindle
Chapter 1
Open clipart is a great efort by many
to include something of the same scale
as that for the other efforts so far.
But in all honesty, it is not done and
yet under progress.
The vertical toolbar on the left shows
Inkscape's drawing and editing tools. In the
top part of the window, below the menu,
there's the Commands bar with general
command buttons and the Tool Controls bar
with controls that are specific to each tool.
The status bar at the bottom of the window
will display useful hints and messages as
you work.
Kindle
Remove book “1984”By George Orwell
Proprietary Software
● Collect information about you
MicrosoftPersonalData
Proprietary Software
● Tracks you
Mrs.X went toplace Y today
Proprietary Software
● Restrict what you can do
Backupmy
musicNo
DRM
Proprietary Software
● Helps NSA
– By adding backdoors
– By revealing bugs in their software
– Should the Indian government use Windows?
Proprietary Software
● Are a company's secrets
● Against the spirit of sharing
Sorry,its oursecret
Howdoes this
work?
How Do We Solve the Problem?
● Get together as a group
● Build software that does not enslave the user
Software Freedom
● FREEDOM 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
● FREEDOM 1: The freedom to study and change the program
● FREEDOM 2: The freedom to redistribute copies
● FREEDOM 3: The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
GNU & FSF
● GNU project started was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman
● Free Software Foundation created in 1985
● GNU software: GCC, Emacs, GLibc, Bash, GNOME, Gtk, HURD, etc.
GNU/Linux
● Linux was made free by Linus Torvolds in 1992
● GNU/Linux was born with
– Linux as the kernel and
– Everything else from GNU
Free Softwarein Education
Free Software in Education
● Better learning oppurtunity
Howdoes this
work?
Here isthe source
code
Free Software in Education
● Encourages the spirit of sharing
Trignometry
Calculus?
Free Software in Education
● Interesting projects
Large useful project
Your contribution
Small project,less useful
Free Software in Education
● Learn best development practises
Large useful project
Your contribution
Expert Developer
Mentoring
Development Model
Development Model
● Many individuals contribute over Internet
● Anyone can contribute like on Wikipedia
● Commercial companies also develop free software
Development Model
● Don't like the software? Fork it.
ForkCreated
Original Project New Project
Advantages
● Higher quality, fewer bugs
● Stability
● Security
● Few viruses, adware, trojan and spyware
● Available in many languages
Founda bug
Free Software Adoption
Mobile Devices
● Free Software make up majority market share in mobile operating systems
– Android (80%)
– Firefox OS
– Sailfish OS
– Mer
– Tizen● Software used includes Qt,
Java, Linux, Sqlite, glibc, OpenSSL etc.
Super Computing
● 485 of the top 500 super computers use GNU/Linux
Web Servers
● Apache is the top web server by market share (35%)
● Nginx is very good for performance & scalability (15%)
Data Storage
● Open Source RDBMS databases are popular
– MySQL
– PostgreSQL● Most of the successful software around Big Data is Free
Software
– Hadoop
– Cassandra
– HBase
– MongoDB
Programming Languages
● Most of the top programming language are Free Software
– Java
– PHP
– Python
– Ruby
– Others (Perl, Lua, Erlang)● Or have Free Software implementations
– C
– C++
– Javascript
– Others (Scheme, Haskell)
Other Popular Free Software
● Firefox and Chrome web browsers
● LibreOffice suite
● Eclipse and Netbeans IDEs
● VLC and Mplayer media players
● Git distributed version control
● Tor for online anonimity
Barriers for Desktop Adoption
● Few desktop PCs come with pre-installed GNU/Linux from the factory
● Windows application support
● Properietary lock-in
You Can Help!
Free Software
● Sometimes Free Software is not good enough
● Freedom requires sacrifice for long term benefit
You Can Help!
● Join and contribute to a Free Software project
– Many projects have friendly communities● Spread the message
● Help others use Free Software
References
● GNU Philosophy: https://gnu.org/philosophy/
● GNU Project: https://gnu.org
● Debian Social Contract: https://www.debian.org/social_contract
● The GNU General Public License: https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Attribution
● Image sources
– Wikipedia.org
– OpenClipart.org● Image Licenses
– Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
– Apache License, Version 2.0
– Mozilla Public License Version 1.1
– GNU LGPL 3