The free version of Polarr offers the same great interface as the $20 full version, with enough tools, filters, brushes, and slides to turn your bland selfies into social-media worthy masterpieces. 2020-9-8 Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.
When we talk about free software, we don’t just mean it has no monetary cost. A common phrase used to describe free software is “free as in speech, not as in beer”. What this means is that not only can you download and use the software but that you are free to examine and modify the source code for that software and give that software away, either as you received it or with your own modifications and improvements.
What makes this possible is free software licensing which comes in a variety of forms. The concept of the public domain for software has existed for quite some time and it’s still in use. However, most free software today relies on copyright to enforce very specific licensing terms. The two forms of free software licenses that concern us most are “copyleft” and “permissive” licenses, exemplified by the Free Software Foundation’s General Public License and the BSD licenses.
The GPL, a copyleft license, essentially says that you’re free to use the software for any purpose and that anyone to whom you give the software must have all the rights you had when receiving the software to study, modify and re-distribute the software.
The BSD licenses, which are considered permissive free software licenses, grant a license to use the software for any purpose but don’t require the creator to share the source code, whether modified or not, with people who receive the software.
Both licenses include a notice that there is no warranty offered with the software. The Devuan operating system ships free software that uses both GPL and BSD licenses.
Why use free software?
Free software benefits from the participation of a global community of free software developers. Many companies pay free software engineers to extend free software to meet their needs and the fruits of that labor are then shared with the community at large. Individual users find free software projects that appeal to them and volunteer their time to fix bugs and add features to make that software more reliable and useful. In contrast, proprietary software source code is jealously guarded and subject to strict, proprietary licensing to prevent people who use it from sharing it.
Given the complexity of today’s computers, one area where free software really shines is software security. Free and open source code is available for everyone to study and as such, many flaws and vulnerabilities are identified and fixed before users can be impacted. For critical vulnerabilities that impact users directly, the free software model guarantees that as soon as a correction is available, everyone can share it. If multiple solutions are found, the best can be chosen or new solutions might be synthesized based on the work of many authors. Compare this with proprietary software where few if any people have access to the source code and it’s up to proprietary software vendors to identify and correct flaws in the software.
Perhaps the biggest reason to participate in the free software ecosystem is that it empowers computer users to make the world a better place. They are free to share their innovations and improvements, find and fix bugs, learn and teach each other and share a sense of adventure and community that can be found nowhere else.
Where can I learn more?
There are several organizations that promote the use of free software, and they’ve written compelling descriptions of what free software is and why it matters to them. Here are two of those:
For more discussion of the GPL and BSD licenses:
GNU is the only operating system developedspecifically to give its users freedom. What is GNU, and what freedomis at stake?
What is GNU?
![Free Free](https://www.ubackup.com/universal-restore/images/free-operating-system-deployment-software-1004/AOMEI PXE Boot.png)
GNU is an operating system thatis free software—that is,it respects users' freedom. The GNU operating system consists of GNUpackages (programs specifically released by the GNU Project) as wellas free software released by third parties. The development of GNUmade it possible to use a computer without software that would trampleyour freedom.
We recommend installableversions of GNU (more precisely, GNU/Linux distributions) whichare entirely free software. More about GNUbelow.
Hyperbola 0.3 with i3 window manager,cool-retro-term (terminal emulator), Gimp (image editor), and Iceweasel-UXP (webbrowser)
Guix / GNOME3
Parabola / LXDE
Trisquel / MATE
What is the Free Software Movement?
The free software movement campaigns to win for the users ofcomputing the freedom that comes from free software. Free softwareputs its users in control of their own computing. Nonfree softwareputs its users under the power of the software's developer. Seethe video explanation.
What is Free Software?
Free software means the users have the freedom to run,copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand theconcept, you should think of “free” as in “freespeech”, not as in “free beer”.
More precisely, free software means users of a program havethe four essentialfreedoms:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Developments in technology and network use have made these freedomseven moreimportant now than they were in 1983.
![Free operating systems software downloads Free operating systems software downloads](/uploads/1/1/9/8/119877376/443623260.jpg)
Nowadays the free software movement goes far beyond developing theGNU system. See the Free SoftwareFoundation's web site for more about what we do, and a listof ways you can help.
More about GNU
GNU is a Unix-like operating system. Thatmeans it is a collection of many programs: applications, libraries,developer tools, even games. The development of GNU, started inJanuary 1984, is known as the GNU Project. Many of the programs inGNU are released under the auspices of the GNU Project; those wecall GNU packages.
The name “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU'sNotUnix.” “GNU”is pronounced g'noo, as one syllable, like saying“grew” but replacing the r with n.
The program in a Unix-like system that allocates machine resourcesand talks to the hardware is called the “kernel”. GNU istypically used with a kernel called Linux. This combination isthe GNU/Linux operatingsystem. GNU/Linux is used by millions, thoughmany call it “Linux” bymistake.
GNU's own kernel, The Hurd,was started in 1990 (before Linux was started). Volunteers continuedeveloping the Hurd because it is an interesting technicalproject.
The GNU Project supports the Free Software Foundation's petition to call on school administrators around the world to stop requiring students to run nonfree software. Sign the petitionfor freedom in the classroom.
Free Os Software Downloads
The GNU Project strongly urges the community to communicate in ways that are friendly, welcoming and kind. See the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines.
RFC 8905 - 'The 'payto' URI Scheme for Payments' published: 2020-11: RFC 8905: 'The 'payto' URI Scheme for Payments' publishedWe are happy to announce the publicatio...
[From Arch] libtraceevent>=5.9-1 update requires manual intervention: The libtraceevent package prior to version 5.9-1 was missing a soname link. This has been fixed in 5.9-1, so the upgra...
GNU Parallel 20201022 ('Samuel Paty'): GNU Parallel 20201022 ('Samuel Paty') has been released. It is available for download at: http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/parallel/ Please help...
Take Action
- Support the efforts on net neutralityin the USA,and in your home country.
- Defend privacy, and support global copyright reform with LQDN.
- Support current FSFcampaigns.
- Fight against software patents:worldwide, andin Europe.
Can you contribute to any ofthese HighPriority Areas?
- Free phone operating system,
- decentralization, federation and self-hosting,
- free drivers, firmware and hardware designs,
- real-time voice and video chat,
- encourage contribution by people underrepresented in the community,
- and more.
Can you help maintain a GNU package?
- cfengine, freedink, freetalk, halifax, mcron, quickthreads,are all looking for maintainers.
- Also, these packages are looking for co-maintainers:aspell, bison, gnuae, gnubik, metaexchange, powerguru, xboard.
See the package web pages for more information.
Today's random package…
Libgcrypt
Free Os Software Downloads Operating Systems
Libgcrypt is a general-purpose cryptographic library. It provides thestandard cryptographic building blocks such as symmetric ciphers, hashalgorithms, public key algorithms, large integer functions and randomnumber generation.(doc)