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Free Software Foundation is an uncommercial organization which was founded by Richard Stallman in 1985. The main object of founding of the given corporation consisted in the necessity of support of free software movement which favours the freedom of programmers and computer users to create modify and redistribute free software. The headquarters of the Free Software Foundation are situated in Massachusetts, USA.

Till the middle of 1990’s the basic aim of FSF was the hiring of software developers who had to create free software for the GNU Project. Since that time, the employees and volunteers of FSF were engaged in developing of legal and structural issues for this movement and community.

It should be noted that only free software is to be used on computers of Free Software Foundation.

November 25, 2002 the Free Software Foundation started a program of FSF Associate Membership for private individuals. March 5, 2003 FSF also ran a program Corporate Patron for profit organizations. For instance in April, 2004 the Foundation included 45 of corporate patrons.

The FSF disposes of copyrights on different indispensible pieces which belong to the GNU system, such as GNU Compiler Collection. Being the copyright holder, it is empowered to enforce the GNU General Public License in case there copyright infringement on software takes place. Beginning with 1991 till 2001, GPL enforcement was put into effect unofficially usually by Richard Stallman. In March 2003, SCO registered a claim against IBM, asserting that the contribution on the part of IBM infringed the rights of SCO. On the 5^th of November, 2003 FSF received a subpoena to appear in court. FSF managed to refute its negative influence on the promotion of free software.

From 2003 to 2005, FSF organized legal seminars that aimed to clarify the GPL and the law. Most of these seminars were given by Bradley M. Kuhn and Daniel Ravicher. This was the fist measure taken to provide official legal education on the GPL.

In 1999, FSF received Linus Torvalds Award for free software. In 2005, FSF was honored with Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in the category “Digital Communities”.

Free software is software that offers a compute user the freedom to study, modify and redistribute it. Free software is considered the foundation of a learning society, whose purpose is to share experience and knowledge with other computer users and programmers. The free software movement was founded by world famous programmer Richard Stallman in 1983. At that time the computer scientist initiated a GNU project. 2 years later Stallman launched the Free Software Foundation.

One of the main missions of this Foundation is the educating on behalf of programmers from every corner of the globe. Millions of people from the whole world give preference to free software which they install on their computers.

Year after year free software developers gather a great number of copyright assignments from individuals and corporations who work on free software.

Free Software Foundation records the collected copyrights together with US copyright office and issue the license, which enables the users to distribute the software in question. This process guarantees that free software distributors work in compliance with the main obligations to convey freedom to other users, and to share, modify and study the code. This work is possible thanks to free software licensing and Compliance Laboratory. The GNU General Public License, being the most popular free software license in the world is published by FSF. The main object of the world recognized license is the conserving and promoting software freedom. Other licenses, published by Free Software Foundation are the GNU Lesser General Public License, the GNU Free Document License, the GNU Affero General Public License and the GNU Free Document License.

The Foundation supports the freedom of software, being against proprietary software. It is also presents significant resources to the public that include the FSF/Unesco free software directory.

Free software is software that gives its users the right to unlimited installation, program startup, free usage, studying, redistribution and modifying. The software is available free of charge, however in some cases it can have a fee.

The name “free software” had been previously used in the Unix world. Not long ago it was accepted in the general computer community. Free software is also called as Freed Software, Liberated Software or freely redistributable software.

In 1983 Richard Stallman set up free software movement. The goal of the given movement was to provide the “software freedom” to computer users. It is noteworthy that the notion itself was introduced by Richard Stallman and it reflects the principles of open software engineering in the scientific community, which was formed in American universities in 1970’s. Richard Stallman formulated the principles of free software. These principles mention authors’ rights, which are transmitted to the computer users:

Freedom 0: the software can be used freely for any purpose;

Freedom 1: freedom to study the way the program operates and adapt it to your purposes, on condition that the incoming text of the program is available;

Freedom 2: you may redistribute the copies of the program freely, to help your neighbors;

Freedom 3: the program may be modified and improved freely. The improvements may be released to the public as well, to profit the whole community.

The main condition of the third freedom is the availability of the incoming text of the program and the possibility to make modifications and corrections in the program.

If the software satisfies the requirements of these four principles, it can be considered free software. Thus it is free and available for modifying and revising.

As opposed to “freeware” which does not have a fee, free software may be redistributed by collecting payment for it, or it can be absolutely free of charge. However, the main thing concerning the software in question is to follow four principles of freedom.