PERSPECTIVES ON COLLABORATIVE MUSIC Hello. In this video, we'll talk about two terms related to the openness of a software's source code: free software, and open source. We should say that, although these terms technically do mean the same thing and can often be used interchangeably, their stances on the openness and access to free code are different. We hope to clarify the difference between these terms in this video and also to present the cultural movements derived from each one. Let's start by talking about free software. For this it's important to mention Richard Stallman, an American programmer who started the free software movement in the early 1980s and soon after founded the Free Software Foundation, which is still active to date, and which has been key for the development of free technologies in the last decades. Specifically, Stallman defined free software as any that possessed the following freedoms: First, the freedom to use the computer program for the user's interests. Second, the freedom to access the program's source code, to study and adapt it to the user's needs. Third, the freedom to share and distribute the program openly, and lastly the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program. According to Stallman, a software can only be free if it follows each and every one of these characteristics under the fundamental premise that free sharing must be promoted above any private interest. In this sense, Stallman himself developed a legal resource known as the general public license, or GPL for short, to prohibit the user of a free software from deriving products that don't preserve the same freedoms. In other words, any derivation of a free software must by law maintain the same status of free software, which is what's known as the "copyleft" principle. Lastly, it's important to specify that this doesn't necessarily mean that the software's distribution is free, because free software refers to freedom, not price. You can find more detailed information surrounding free software online. Let's move on to talk about the movement known as open source, which stems from the principles of free software, but with some important differences. In broad terms, the open source movement follows a rhetoric of technical efficiency, in which the source code of a program can be opened to improve it, often with the goal of making a business model that's both friendly and profitable. A central figure for this movement is Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds, who is globally known for publishing in 1991 the data kernel known as Linux, which was fundamental for developing the GNU/Linux operating systems. Although Torvalds shares many of the ideas, principles and freedoms of free software, his discourse is more focused on efficiency and distributed productivity than on freedom in itself. Moving forward, a community of programmers, artists and businesspeople formed since 1997 seeking to expand the thought surrounding free software, specifically to remove the limitations for products derived from free software to be distributed without being subject to the original freedoms. This has given way to hybrid models that mix free and private software, and even managed to establish an open work model and a series of principles that seek to place open source in a wider and more inclusive market than what the free software movement sought. In this sense, a marketing campaign was launched using the term Open Source to promote the convenience of open source. So we can see that both movements share the idea of opening the code and making it available to the user. However, we also see their different standings and the implications thereof in different matters. Although these standings resulted in different communities, for example among artists who prefer to use free software or to use software related to the open source community, in this course we don't want to exclusively follow either perspective, but rather invite you to make the most of both of them. Lastly, we're interested in you sharing music, benefitting from the free and open technological resources that we've been preparing to share with you, and ultimately developing your creativity in an open, free and collaborative environment. After clearing all this up, in our next video we'll see how the principles of free software and open source can be applied to culture in a broader and more general sense, and we'll talk specifically about the free-culture movement. See you there.
