In January 1984, Richard Stallman resigned from the Artificial Intelligence laboratory at MIT in order to devote himself to the development of software for the GNU project (GNU is the recursive acronym “GNU is Not Unix”). Its goal is to found a new community that freely shares the software. Stallman’s idea is to build a complete, completely free operating system. To do this, Stallman Read More
The free software development model is essentially collaborative . A free software project generally brings together several developers who may be distant from each other. The Sourceforge site gives a good overview of the collaborative environments used in the development of free software. Many companies are investing in free software. Some programmers are even employed, and therefore paid, to develop free software. This is the case Read More
From a philosophical point of view, free software defends freedom and equal access to new technologies. Free software provides users with the ability to translate, improve, and adapt software for their own needs. In fact, “free software contributes to ensuring the protection of local cultures, multilingualism, the development and conservation of information” ( UNESCO, 2002 ). To this end, Read More
Free software is mainly distributed over the Internet. The main cooperative development sites are: Sourceforge Savannah Several compilation sites exist: freshmeat.net , www.framasoft.net and the Free Software Directory . There are also websites for streaming open source operating systems : LinuxISO (ISO images of Linux distributions), Mandrake , Red Hat and SuSE . There are personal sites that host free software, download sites (freeware, shareware and open source software) www.tucows.com , download.com , telecharger.01net.com ). There are also many online reviews and their download area. In addition Read More
