Glossary
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- Copyleft
- Copyright that requires any copies or derivative works to
provide the four freedoms.
- Copyright
- The restrictions placed by a work's owner on the production
and distribution of copies.
- Cracking
- Malicious, usually illegal, circumvention of software
security and safeguards.
- Distribution
(Distro)
- A
collection of software applications (e.g., operating systems,
utilities, server programs, and desktop applications) bundled by a
third party usually to address a specific group of users/uses.
- Four Freedoms
- Freedom 0: the freedom to use the software for any purpose.
Freedom 1: the freedom to view and understand the source code and
modify it to meet personal needs.
Freedom 2: the freedom to distribute unmodified copies of the
software.
Freedom 3: the freedom to distribute modified copies of the software.
- Free Services
- Services, usually Web-based, that are free to use but do
not protect users' freedoms.
- Free Software
- Free as in Freedom - libre rather than gratis - as in free
speech, not free beer - having the four freedoms, not focused on price.
- Freeware/Shareware/Demoware
- Software applications that are
usually made available in compiled form for free or limited trial
usage. These usually do not protect the four freedoms.
- GNU
- A software development project aimed at creating and
providing an operating system and utilities that honor the four
freedoms. The term, GNU, is a recursive acronym for GNU's not Unix. It
is pronounced GUH-NU.
- GNU/Linux
- The combination of the GNU Project utilities and the Linux
operating system kernel.
- Hacking
- A playful ingenuity that creates innovation from
experimentation in unconventional ways.
- Kernel
- The central part of an operating system that controls
the communication between software applications and the hardware
devices.
- Open Courseware
- Educational materials that are intended to be freely shared
and modified by other educators.
- Open-Source
Software
- Computer programs for which the source code is publicly
available. This term was adopted to appeal to potential corporate
software users, who might be skeptical about "free" software.
- Public Domain
- A category of works to which copyright restrictions no
longer apply.
- Software Bug
- An unintended result of programming code. The origin of the
term derives from actual insect that short-circuited electronic
components.
- Software
License
- The agreement between the software application user and the
copyright holder.
- Source Code
- The programming instructions for a software application,
which are written in a specific programming language.
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