Knowra Free Software Foundation Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded by Richard Stallman in 1985 to promote computer users’ freedom and support free software, including the GNU operating system.
GNU General Public License : A family of free software licenses that requires distributed modified versions to preserve users’ freedoms. The FSF publishes the GPL to protect users’ ability to run, study, modify, and share software.
Richard Stallman : An American programmer and activist who launched the GNU Project and founded the Free Software Foundation. Stallman established the FSF to support the GNU Project and advance software freedom.
Open Source Initiative : A nonprofit organization that promotes open-source software and maintains a definition and certification process for open-source licenses. The OSI emphasizes practical development benefits, while the FSF frames software freedom as an ethical issue.
Copyleft : A licensing approach that uses copyright law to preserve permissions to modify and redistribute works in derivative versions. The FSF developed copyleft as a way to keep software freedoms intact across redistribution.
GNU Project : A project launched in 1983 to develop a Unix-like operating system composed entirely of free software. The FSF supports GNU, whose tools form a major part of the GNU/Linux operating system.
GNU Manifesto : Richard Stallman’s 1985 essay explaining the GNU Project and inviting support for a free Unix-like operating system. Published the year the FSF was founded, it set out the project the organization would support.
Open-source software : Software distributed under licenses meeting criteria that permit use, inspection, modification, and redistribution of its source code. Open-source and free software often describe the same licenses but emphasize different values.
GNU Lesser General Public License : A GNU license that permits linking free libraries with software under other licenses, subject to specified conditions. The FSF created the LGPL to protect library users’ freedoms while allowing broader software compatibility.
GNU Guix : A functional package manager and operating-system distribution built around declarative configuration and reproducible software environments. This FSF-sponsored project applies GNU principles to package management and operating-system design.
GNU Compiler Collection : A collection of compilers developed by the GNU Project for languages including C, C++, and Fortran. GCC became one of GNU’s central technical achievements and a major focus of FSF support.
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