 The English word free can mean very different things depending on the context if you say free samples It's clear that you mean small quantities of a product that are distributed free of charge if you say free market It's pretty obvious you're talking about the lack of artificial limitations and restrictions But if you say free software You really can't be sure what people will hear this video is a disambiguation of the term free software Hey, I'm Anfa. I am an electronic music producer and sound designer The unusual thing about me is that I exclusively use free and open source software and Linux Both for my own projects and for clients work freedom Licensing and price are important aspects of computer software. So our security privacy and Sustainability You've probably heard the term freeware and free software thrown around and you might be thinking that these two are synonymous They're not there's a very important difference between them It's a big deal and that's why I'm making this video the term freeware Refers to software that you can obtain and run free of charge to be specific Everyone is granted a license to obtain and run the software without paying any money But nothing else and you might be thinking well What more can I ask for than to get it and run it for free? Well, there's plenty more you can ask for on the other hand the term free software refers to software that's Source code is distributed free of charge But there's more to it to understand what free software is we need to understand the distinction between binary executables and source code Computer programs are usually distributed as binary files Binary means they are not human readable. These files contain raw Instructions for the computer to follow. Programmers don't work on the binary files directly What they do is create source code that is human readable text files that contain all the Instructions defining a program's behavior the source code is an intermediary between the humans and the computer a special tool called a Compiler takes the source code and based on it builds the binary executable files that a computer can execute The important thing to note here is for mere mortals It's impossible to understand what a program does without access to the source code If all you have are the binary executables It's also not really possible to modify the program I'm going to ignore software reverse engineering and hacking for this matter because that's not my point when you install Freeware or proprietary software all you get are the binaries and the license to run them You are not allowed to view the source code and even if you can't view it because some proprietary software is Source available that means you can view the source code But you're not allowed to modify it and build the program for yourself It's not open source and here's where free software makes an important difference free software is all about User freedom when you download free software you can also download the source code But there's more you can change it you can build the software for yourself and you can even Distribute your modified version of the software. This is where the free software ecosystem is born People create software to learn the craft or to solve a problem for themselves or others Then anyone can take that software and improve it fix problems harden security Add features or even fork it and take it into a completely new direction Independent of the original project. It's all allowed and welcomed in the free software world You may remember I mentioned Security privacy and sustainability as important aspects of computer software Let's talk about that if you install proprietary piece of software Regardless if it's freeware or paid software you have no way of knowing what the software is Actually doing on your computer You're probably aware that the information about what people do with their computers is very valuable and can be sold for a lot of money That's why we're constantly hearing about Corporations abusing their users privacy to exploit it for additional income Unfortunately with proprietary software We really have no way of knowing if we are being spied on and exploited for profit if you are running a Proprietary operating system on your computer. You're most likely generating some extra income for a big corporation With free software, this is completely different. First up such practices are considered malicious and Intolerable so if anyone would try to sneak some code that would do that It would be immediately discovered removed and the clean version of their software would be published by the community The same goes for security With proprietary software there is really no way of knowing what security holes are present in it And you might think that's a good thing because the malicious actors don't know either But trust me they have ways of discovering the vulnerabilities and exploiting them without having access to the source code with free software There's much more eyes Searching for possible security holes There's a reason why Linux a free and open source operating system is the backbone of the internet So proprietary software also known as closed source software Whether you got it for free or you paid for it is a black box. There could be nothing bad in there But unless there is a source code leak We really don't know let's go back to the price aspect for a while Most free software projects like blender audacity inkscape gimp critter Provide their binary packages free of charge, but this is actually not a requirement of free software the binary packages can be distributed for a price and Some projects like Ardor or armor paint do that to help sustain the continued development You can still get the source code build them for yourselves or obtain an unofficial build free of charge It's all perfectly legal But it's always a good idea to support the project with your money Let's go a bit deeper into the language used in relation to free software. There's quite a lot of different terms and They are confusing So another term for free software is open source software, which is a little bit more descriptive Some people argue that free software and open source software are completely different philosophies and they cannot be merged But anyway after that people started calling it free and open source software to be more descriptive Which is often shortened to false another term used is liberal software, which replaces the ambiguous word free with Libre Libre from Liberty and from there we have another compound name Free Libre and open source software often shortened to floss Probably notice that a free software community has a thing for weird unpronounceable names You may wonder right now weird it all this start and why haven't I heard about it until now? As far as I know the first free software project was the GNU project started in the 80s by Richard Stallman His goal was to create a complete UNIX like operating system that was completely free for everyone And he's created the GNU general public license as a legal foundation for the project This license often called GNU GPL or just GPL for short was the first free software license And pretty much the only limitation that it imposes is that if you use any source code that was released under the GNU GPL License in your project you also need to release your software as free software under the same license Which is often referred to as the viral nature of the GPL license and some people don't like that But there are other free software licenses like MIT Apache. What have you I don't want to confuse you with this stuff right now The thing is the GNU software project was missing a kernel They had all the system libraries and utilities, but they didn't have an operating system kernel But Linus Torvalds has just happened to have Written a UNIX compatible kernel for himself So they joined forces and created GNU slash Linux Which was the first free and open source operating system and things went snowballing from there One last aspect I want to touch upon is the software sustainability If a company or a person that made the proprietary software you're using went out of business A few things can happen. The software may become abandonware The development stops and you're just stuck with the last published version Hoping that it's going to work for the years to come But software that is not updated usually Stops working after some time because the software landscape around it keeps changing moving forward The software libraries that it depended on changed the whole operating system changed a little bit and things stopped working This is called bitrat another thing is that the company and their property might be bought by someone else And they can either continue the project and you're happy Or they can just give it the axe Or they can take it into a completely new direction that you may not like Either way You're even without bankruptcy a company might just decide to discontinue a product if it's not viable for their business If it was delivered to you as a service You're pretty much screwed because you're going to be immediately and permanently cut off This is a big problem in the video game industry But it's not limited to that space with free and open source software None of this is a problem because anyone can pick up the source code And make sure the software is going to be operational Even if it was abandoned Or if the original developers take the software in a direction you don't like You can copy their software and run with it in a different direction Marketing specialists around the world are working hard to make us believe that only proprietary software Is going to let us do things that we want or need to do but this is simply not true The underground free software movement is providing tools for everyone Regardless of their country of residence or financial situation free software means freedom Freedom to use the software freedom to study it to alter it freedom to keep your privacy And freedom to use it without any artificial limitations And I firmly believe that free software is the future of computing Thanks for watching. I hope this video was worth your time On this channel, I teach about music production and sound design using free and open source software and Linux If that's your thing, go check out my other videos If not, I hope you'll discover free software And be happier for it. My work here is directly funded by the free software community If you'd like to join these awesome people, please go to patreon.com slash anfa or liberapay.com slash anfa Now go and install manjaro linux All right, so that was a bit of a general video I regularly do tutorials, but I've seen so many people confuse freeware with free software that I thought I need to address that and make this video to Explain the difference And make it abundantly Abandon abandon abundantly clear