Eco-anxiety

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-anxiety 

Eco-anxiety (short for ecological anxiety), also known as eco-distress or climate anxiety, is a challenging emotional response to climate change and other environmental issues. Extensive studies have been done on ecological anxiety since 2007, and various definitions remain in use. The condition is not a medical diagnosis and is regarded as a rational response to the reality of climate change; however, severe instances can have a mental health impact if left without alleviation. There is also evidence that eco-anxiety is caused by the way researchers frame their research and their narratives of the evidence about climate change: if they do not consider the possibility of finding any solution to overcome climate change and for individuals to make a difference, they contribute to this feeling of powerlessness.

Eco-anxiety is an unpleasant emotion, though it can also motivate useful behavior such as the gathering of relevant information. Yet it can also manifest as conflict avoidance, or even be "paralyzing". Some people have reported experiencing so much anxiety and fear about the future with climate change that they choose not to have children. Eco-anxiety has received more attention after 2017, and especially since late 2018 with Greta Thunberg publicly discussing her own eco-anxiety.

In 2018, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a report about the impact of climate change on mental health. It said that "gradual, long-term changes in climate can also surface a number of different emotions, including fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, or exhaustion". Generally this is likely to have the greatest impact on young people. Eco-anxiety that is now affecting young adults has been likened to Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation felt by baby boomers. Research has found that although there are heightened emotional experiences linked with the acknowledgement and anticipation of climate change and its impact on society, these are inherently adaptive. Furthermore, engaging with these emotional experiences leads to increased resilience, agency, reflective functioning and collective action. Individuals are encouraged to find collective ways of processing their climate related emotional experiences in order to support mental health and well-being.

Definition

Eco-anxiety has been defined in various different ways; a common feature of the different definitions is that they describe challenging emotional responses to climate change and other environmental issues.

The term eco-anxiety is said to have been coined by Glenn Albrecht who defined it as "a chronic fear of environmental doom". Another widely cited definition is: "the generalized sense that the ecological foundations of existence are in the process of collapse." Some scholars use the term eco-anxiety as a synonym for climate-anxiety, while others like to treat the terms separately. The APA has defined eco-anxiety as"the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one's future and that of next generations".

Prevalence

Degrees of concern about the effects of climate change vary with political affiliation.

In 2023, almost six in ten respondents reported that a severe effect of climate change has already occurred where they live, with 38% expecting to be displaced from their homes in the next 25 years because of climate change.

In 2018, surveys conducted in the United States found that between 21% and 29% of Americans said they were "very" worried about the climate, which is double the rate of a similar study in 2015. A Yale 2023 survey found similar results, that climate change is distressing. This concept of climate or ecological anxiety and grief is far-reaching due to the extensive awareness about climate change that is made possible through technology and global communication.

Climate change is an ongoing global threat that is largely characterized by uncertainty and a lack of understanding. For this reason, anxiety and grief in humans is a natural and rational responses for those feeling fear or a lack of control. For example, these feelings could arise in people who are forced to leave their homes, deal with uncertainty about their future environment, or feel concern for the future harm of their children. Climate grief can be divided into three categories: physical ecological losses, the loss of environmental knowledge, and anticipated future losses.

Children and young adults

The condition has become especially common among children and young people – in 2021, in some universities, over 70% of students described themselves as suffering from eco-anxiety. However, as of early 2021, validated ways to assess the prevalence of climate or eco-anxiety were not well established. A September 2021 survey queried 10,000 young people from 10 countries across the world, finding that almost 60% were either very or extremely worried about climate change. Two thirds said they felt sad, afraid and anxious, while close to 40% reported they were hesitant to have children.

The people who surround children and young adults, like parents, guardians, teachers, and mentors, can have an impact on how they view climate change. There is research being done about how these groups of people should talk to children and young adults to prevent eco-anxiety in these populations, while still encouraging climate change mitigation practices.

Women

Women’s emergence of anxiety, worry, and fear in relation to climate change is associated not only with biological factors but also with sociocultural determinants that lie in the structural inequality. Women are at higher risk due to their imposed traditional gender roles and unequal access to power, information, and financial resources. Climate stressors, such as droughts, floods, or extreme heat, force women to work more just to gain water, energy, and food for their families, thereby consuming time that could have been used for earning a living or adapting.

An October 2021 report based on polling in the UK found that 78% of people surveyed expressed some degree of eco-anxiety. It found that women (45%) were substantially more likely to report high levels of eco-anxiety compared to men (36%). Similar observations have been reported worldwide, including European and African countries. Women with low socioeconomic status (SES) are particularly vulnerable to eco-anxiety. Countries facing adverse effects of climate conditions, such as India, the Philippines, and Nigeria, have recorded increasing rates of functional impact due to climate change distress. Heat stress is among the key aggravating factors in these areas, particularly for women who engage in agricultural activities or other outdoor jobs, which may result in forced relocation. A 2023 study claimed that eco-anxiety is more prevalent in women because 80% of climate migrants are women.

Climate change often plays a role in reproductive planning, as eco-anxiety increases women’s reluctance to childbearing due to worries about a bleak future and carbon footprint. A survey conducted by the New York Times in 2018 found that 33% of women who chose not to have children cited climate change as a reason. However, in nations where unpredictable climate change disrupts farming routines, families may opt for having more children to ensure an adequate labor supply for survival, rather than adhering to the trend of low fertility. This economic and cultural complexity indicates that, while women in the West might decide to go childfree as an environmental measure, women in low-SES, climate-vulnerable areas face tough choices on reproduction.

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous populations are especially vulnerable to eco-anxiety and other climate-caused emotional responses, because of their reliance on their land and land-based activities for their livelihood and well-being. A 2021 study found that indigenous populations who were exposed to environmental changes associated with climate change, like species loss, droughts, rising temperatures, and erratic weather patterns, were most likely to experience a decrease in mental wellbeing. This decrease can be expressed as eco-anxiety, but also as other climate related emotional responses, like eco-anger.

Symptoms

Eco-anxiety can manifest in ways that cause physical symptoms and may exacerbate pre-existing mental health conditions. Symptoms include irritability, sleeplessness, inability to relax, loss of appetite, poor concentration, bouts of weakness, panic attacks, muscle tension and twitching. These symptoms are similar to the symptoms that someone diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder might experience.

These symptoms are common in people who experience eco-anxiety. For example, a 2022 study commissioned by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine reported that "anxieties around climate change and environmental issues" caused insomnia for 70% of Americans.

Other mental and/or emotional symptoms include feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, distancing oneself from or avoiding the issue, and feeling overwhelmed or suffocated.

Treatment and response

The first step for therapists in treating eco-anxiety is realizing that a fearful response to a real condition is not pathological. Eco-anxiety is a completely normal response, even if the client finds it profoundly disturbing. Therapists need to take clients' fears about the situation seriously and "not assume they're a dysfunctional mental health problem or that a person suffering from eco-anxiety is somehow ill." In terms of treatment, individualistic models of mental health are "not designed to deal with collective trauma on a planetary scale".

Various non-clinical treatments, group work options, internet based support forums, and self-help books are available for people suffering from less severe psychological conditions. Some of the psychological impacts require no form of treatment at all, and can even be positive: for example, worry about climate change can be positively related to information-seeking and to a sense of being able to influence such problems.

One way to combat eco-anxiety is through beliefs about the effectiveness of personal actions. Eco-anxiety can be fueled in part by climate change helplessness, a form of learned helplessness applied to climate change fears. Because climate change is such an enormous issue with such dire consequences, an individual's actions may seem to make no difference in combatting the bigger issue. This can demotivate people from taking any pro-environmental actions at all. But, an intervention advocating for the effectiveness of individual actions can reduce feelings of apathy and anxiety associated with climate change helplessness. When people receive information describing how their personal actions impact the environment, they report less fear of climate change, and intend to make more sustainable choices, showing that climate change helplessness can be treated by beliefs in climate change efficacy.

In general, psychotherapists say that when individuals take action to combat climate change, this reduces anxiety levels by bringing a sense of personal empowerment and feelings of connection with others in the community. Many psychologists emphasize that in addition to action, there is a need to build emotional resilience to avoid burnout.

A 2021 literature review found that emotional responses to crisis can be adaptive when the individual has the capacity and support to process and reflect on this emotion. In these cases, individuals are able to grow from their experiences and support others. In the context of climate change, this capacity for deep reflection is necessary to navigate the emotional challenges that both individuals and societies face.^[57][58][59]

Further research

As eco-anxiety has gained traction and becomes more prevalent, one of the current hot topics in the scientific literature concerns how to define and assess eco-anxiety. Other future research may examine and develop ways for people to remain resilient in the face of climate change.

Related emotional responses

In the field of ecopsychology, there are other climate-specific psychological impacts that are less well studied than eco-anxiety. They include, but are not limited to, eco-grief (or eco-depression), eco-anger, eco-guilt, and solastalgia.

Eco-anger

Eco-anger is frustration about climate change and the environmental changes that are caused by it. It can also be frustration towards certain groups, corporations, or countries that contribute to climate change. A study that separated the effects of eco-anxiety, eco-depression and eco-anger, found that eco-anger is the best for a person's wellbeing. This study also found that eco-anger is good for motivating participation in actions that combat climate change. A separate report from 2021 found that eco-anger was significantly more common among young people.

Eco-grief

After a Blue Origin spaceflight

      It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna... things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.

— William Shatner in his Boldly Go autobiography

Ecological grief (or eco-grief) is "the grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change."

Eco-guilt

Eco-guilt is "guilt that arises when people think about times they have not met personal or societal standards for environmental behavior." This guilt can take the form of self-criticism, self-blame, self-examination, and/or self-torturing.

Solastalgia

Solastalgia is "the distress caused by the transformation and degradation of one's home environment." A 2019 study found that the number of people who experience solastalgia will increase as the rate of climate change also continues to increase. This is due to the fact that more people will see the effects of climate change on their home environments as climate change continues. It is becoming increasingly manifest that only the ecology suffers from climate change but also domains such as historic and cultural heritage, which are closely linked to sentiments of belonging and identity.

Organizations

Several psychological organizations have been founded around climate psychology. Scholars have pointed out that there is a need for a systemic approach to provide various resources for people in relation to the mental health impacts of ecological problems and climate change. Some organizations, such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists, provide web based guidance to help caregivers assist children and young adults deal with their eco-anxiety.

Eco-anxiety support groups have also been created locally, nationally, and globally. These groups allow people to discuss their fears about climate change and receive advice from other members on how to address those fears. Peer-to-peer support groups have also emerged among individuals who have moved through the stages of grief into acceptance of climate impacts as ongoing and, to some degree, inevitable. Examples includes groups arising from the concepts of Deep adaptation (origin 2018) and Post-doom (origin 2019).

Criticism of copyright

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_copyright

The symbol of Kopimi, an anti-copyright initiative developed by the Piratbyrån, a Swedish organisation actively opposing modern copyright law and practices, and the previous operators of BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay, before it was spun off as an independent organisation

Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implementations, the benefits of which they claim do not justify the policy's costs to society. They advocate for changing the current system, though different groups have different ideas of what that change should be. Some call for remission of the policies to a previous state—copyright once covered few categories of things and had shorter term limits—or they may seek to expand concepts like fair use that allow permissionless copying. Others seek the abolition of copyright itself.

Opposition to copyright is often a portion of platforms advocating for broader social reform. For example, Lawrence Lessig, a free-culture movement speaker, advocates for loosening copyright law as a means of making sharing information easier or addressing the orphan works issue and the Swedish Pirate Party has advocated for limiting copyright to five year terms.

Economic arguments

An anti-copyright symbol

Non-scarcity

Main article: Artificial scarcity

There is an argument that copyright is invalid because, unlike physical property, intellectual property is not scarce and is a legal fiction created by the state. The argument claims that copyright infringement, unlike theft, does not deprive the victim of the original item.

Historical comparison

It is unclear if copyright laws are economically stimulating for most authors, and it is uncommon for copyright laws to be evaluated based on empirical studies of their impacts.

Information technology related concerns

One of the founders of Piratbyrån, Rasmus Fleischer, argues that copyright law simply seems unable to cope with the Internet, and hence is obsolete. He argues that the Internet, and particularly Web 2.0, have brought about the uncertain status of the very idea of "stealing" itself, and that instead business models need to adapt to the reality of the Darknet. He argues that in an attempt to rein in Web 2.0, copyright law in the 21st century is increasingly concerned with criminalising entire technologies, leading to recent attacks on different kinds of search engines, solely because they provide links to files which may be copyrighted. Fleischer points out that Google, while still largely uncontested, operates in a gray zone of copyright (e.g. the business model of Google Books is to display millions of pages of copyrighted and uncopyrighted books as part of a business plan drawing its revenue from advertising). In contrast, others have pointed out that Google Books blocks out large sections of those same books, and they say that does not harm the legitimate interests of rightsholders.

Others have suggested that copyright law must be reformed as a matter of national security, proposing that Western countries make legal carveouts for text and data mining so as to remain ahead in the AI arms race.

Cultural arguments

Freedom of knowledge

"Free Beer" demonstrator supporting the "freedom of knowledge" idea: "Copyright is preventing access to knowledge" (2007).

Groups such as Hipatia advance anti-copyright arguments in the name of "freedom of knowledge" and argue that knowledge should be "shared in solidarity". Such groups may perceive "freedom of knowledge" as a right, and/or as fundamental in realising the right to education, which is an internationally recognised human right, as well as the right to a free culture and the right to free communication. They argue that current copyright law hinders the realisation of these rights in today's knowledge societies relying on new technological means of communication and see copyright law as preventing or slowing human progress.

Authorship and creativity

Lawrence Liang, founder of the Alternative Law Forum, argues that current copyright is based on a too narrow definition of "author", which is assumed to be clear and undisputed. Liang observes that the concept of "the author" is assumed to make universal sense across cultures and across time. Instead, Liang argues that the notion of the author as a unique and transcendent being, possessing originality of spirit, was constructed in Europe after the Industrial Revolution, to distinguish the personality of the author from the expanding realm of mass-produced goods. Hence works created by "authors" were deemed original, and merges with the doctrine of property prevalent at the time.

Liang argues that the concept of "author" is tied to the notion of copyright and emerged to define a new social relationship—the way society perceives the ownership of knowledge. The concept of "author" thus naturalised a particular process of knowledge production where the emphasis on individual contribution and individual ownership takes precedence over the concept of "community knowledge". Relying on the concept of the author, copyright is based on the assumption that without an intellectual property rights regime, authors would have no incentive to further create, and that artists cannot produce new works without an economic incentive. Liang challenges this logic, arguing that "many authors who have little hope of ever finding a market for their publications, and whose copyright is, as a result, virtually worthless, have in the past, and even in the present, continued to write." Liang points out that people produce works purely for personal satisfaction, or even for respect and recognition from peers. Liang argues that the 19th Century saw the prolific authorship of literary works in the absence of meaningful copyright that benefited the author. In fact, Liang argues, copyright protection usually benefited the publisher, and rarely the author.

Preservation of cultural works

The Center for the Study of Public Domain has raised concerns on how the protracted copyright terms in the United States have caused historical films and other cultural works to be destroyed due to disintegration before they can be digitized. The center has described the copyright terms as "absurdly long" which hold little economic benefit to rights holders and prevents efforts to preserve historical artefacts. Director Jennifer Jenkins has said that by the time artefacts enter the public domain in the United States after 95 years, many culturally significant works such as old films and sound recordings have already been lost as a consequence of the long copyright terms.

Ethical issues

The institution of copyright brings up several ethical issues.

Censorship

Main article: Censorship by copyright

Critics of copyright argue that copyright has been abused to suppress free speech, as well as business competition, academic research and artistic expression. As a consequence, copyright legislation such as DMCA has enabled copyright owners to "censor academic discussions and online criticism".

Philosophical arguments

Selmer Bringsjord argues that all forms of copying are morally permissible (without commercial use), because some forms of copying are permissible and there is not a logical distinction between various forms of copying.

Edwin Hettinger argues that natural rights arguments for intellectual property are weak and the philosophical tradition justifying property can not guide us in thinking about intellectual property. Shelly Warwick believes that copyright law as currently constituted does not appear to have a consistent ethical basis.

Organisations and scholars

Groups advocating the abolition of copyright

Main article: Copyright abolition

Demonstration in Sweden in support of file sharing, 2006

Pirate Cinema and groups like The League of Noble Peers advance more radical arguments, opposing copyright per se. A number of anti-copyright groups have recently emerged in the argument over peer-to-peer file sharing, digital freedom, and freedom of information; these include the Association des Audionautes and the Kopimism Church of New Zealand.

In 2003, Eben Moglen, a professor of Law at Columbia University, published The dotCommunist Manifesto, which re-interpreted the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx in the light of the development of computer technology and the internet; much of the re-interpreted content discussed copyright law and privilege in Marxist terms.

Recent developments related to BitTorrent and peer-to-peer file sharing have been termed by media commentators as "copyright wars", with The Pirate Bay being referred to as "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright—or pro-piracy—movement". One well-publicised instance of electronic civil disobedience in the form of large scale intentional copyright infringement occurred on February 24, 2004, in an event called Grey Tuesday. Activists intentionally violated EMI's copyright of The White Album by distributing MP3 files of a mashup album called The Grey Album, in an attempt to draw public attention to copyright reform issues and anti-copyright ideals. Reportedly over 400 sites participated including 170 that hosted the album with some protesters stating that The Grey Album illustrates a need for revisions in copyright law to allow sampling under fair use of copyrighted material, or proposing a system of fair compensation to allow for sampling.

Groups advocating changes to copyright law

French group Association des Audionautes is not anti-copyright per se, but proposes a reformed system for copyright enforcement and compensation. Aziz Ridouan, co-founder of the group, proposes for France to legalise peer-to-peer file sharing and to compensate artists through a surcharge on Internet service provider fees (i.e. an alternative compensation system). Wired magazine reported that major music companies have equated Ridouan's proposal with legitimising piracy. In January 2008, seven Swedish members of parliament from the Moderate Party (part of the governing coalition), authored a piece in a Swedish tabloid calling for the complete decriminalisation of file sharing; they wrote that "Decriminalising all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It's the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet."

In June 2015 a WIPO article, "Remix culture and Amateur Creativity: A Copyright Dilemma", acknowledged the "age of remixing" and the need for a copyright reform while referring to recent law interpretations in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. and Canada's Copyright Modernization Act.

Groups advocating using existing copyright law

Main article: Public copyright license

Groups that argue for using existing copyright legal framework with special licences to achieve their goals, include the copyleft movement and Creative Commons. Creative Commons is not anti-copyright per se, but argues for use of more flexible and open copyright licences within existing copyright law. Creative Commons takes the position that there is an unmet demand for flexibility that allows the copyright owner to release work with only "some rights reserved" or even "no rights reserved". According to Creative Commons many people do not regard default copyright as helping them in gaining the exposure and widespread distribution they want. Creative Commons argue that their licences allow entrepreneurs and artists to employ innovative business models rather than all-out copyright to secure a return on their creative investment.

Scholars and commentators

Scholars and commentators in this field include Lawrence Liang, Jorge Cortell, Rasmus Fleischer, Stephan Kinsella, and Siva Vaidhyanathan.

Traditional anarchists, such as Leo Tolstoy, expressed their refusal to accept copyright.

Free software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

GNU Guix. An example of a GNU FSDG complying free-software operating system running some representative applications. Shown are the GNOME desktop environment, the GNU Emacs text editor, the GIMP image editor, and the VLC media player.

Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users (not just the developer) ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

The right to study and modify a computer program entails that the source code—the preferred format for making changes—be made available to users of that program. While this is often called "access to source code" or "public availability", the Free Software Foundation (FSF) recommends against thinking in those terms, because it might give the impression that users have an obligation (as opposed to a right) to give non-users a copy of the program.

Although the term "free software" had already been used loosely in the past and other permissive software like the Berkeley Software Distribution released in 1978 existed, Richard Stallman is credited with tying it to the sense under discussion and starting the free software movement in 1983, when he launched the GNU Project: a collaborative effort to create a freedom-respecting operating system, and to revive the spirit of cooperation once prevalent among hackers during the early days of computing.

Context

This Euler diagram describes the typical relationship between freeware and free and open-source software (FOSS): According to David Rosen from Wolfire Games in 2010, open source / free software (orange) is most often gratis but not always. Freeware (green) seldom expose their source code.

Free software differs from:

• proprietary software, such as Microsoft Office, Windows, Adobe Photoshop, Facebook or FaceTime. Users cannot study, change, and share their source code.
• freeware or gratis software, which is a category of proprietary software that does not require payment for basic use.

For software under the purview of copyright to be free, it must carry a software license whereby the author grants users the aforementioned rights. Software that is not covered by copyright law, such as software in the public domain, is free as long as the source code is also in the public domain, or otherwise available without restrictions.

Proprietary software uses restrictive software licences or EULAs and usually does not provide users with the source code. Users are thus legally or technically prevented from changing the software, and this results in reliance on the publisher to provide updates, help, and support. (See also vendor lock-in and abandonware). Users often may not reverse engineer, modify, or redistribute proprietary software. Beyond copyright law, contracts and a lack of source code, there can exist additional obstacles keeping users from exercising freedom over a piece of software, such as software patents and digital rights management (more specifically, tivoization).

Free software can be a for-profit, commercial activity or not. Some free software is developed by volunteer computer programmers while other is developed by corporations; or even by both.

Naming and differences with open source

Main article: Alternative terms for free software

Although both definitions refer to almost equivalent corpora of programs, the Free Software Foundation recommends using the term "free software" rather than "open-source software" (an alternative, yet similar, concept coined in 1998), because the goals and messaging are quite dissimilar. According to the Free Software Foundation, "Open source" and its associated campaign mostly focus on the technicalities of the public development model and marketing free software to businesses, while taking the ethical issue of user rights very lightly or even antagonistically. Stallman has also stated that considering the practical advantages of free software is like considering the practical advantages of not being handcuffed, in that it is not necessary for an individual to consider practical reasons in order to realize that being handcuffed is undesirable in itself.

The FSF also notes that "Open Source" has exactly one specific meaning in common English, namely that "you can look at the source code." It states that while the term "Free Software" can lead to two different interpretations, at least one of them is consistent with the intended meaning unlike the term "Open Source". The loan adjective "libre" is often used to avoid the ambiguity of the word "free" in the English language, and the ambiguity with the older usage of "free software" as public-domain software. (See Gratis versus libre.)

Definition and the Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software

Main article: The Free Software Definition

See also: Debian Free Software Guidelines and The Open Source Definition

Diagram of free and nonfree software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation. Left: free software, right: proprietary software, encircled: gratis software

The first formal definition of free software was published by FSF in February 1986. That definition, written by Richard Stallman, is still maintained today and states that software is free software if people who receive a copy of the software have the following four freedoms. The numbering begins with zero, not only as a spoof on the common usage of zero-based numbering in programming languages, but also because "Freedom 0" was not initially included in the list, but later added first in the list as it was considered very important.

• Freedom 0: The freedom to use the program for any purpose.
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
• Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor.
• Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Freedoms 1 and 3 require source code to be available because studying and modifying software without its source code can range from highly impractical to nearly impossible.

Thus, free software means that computer users have the freedom to cooperate with whom they choose, and to control the software they use. To summarize this into a remark distinguishing libre (freedom) software from gratis (zero price) software, the Free Software Foundation says: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'". (See Gratis versus libre.)

In the late 1990s, other groups published their own definitions that describe an almost identical set of software. The most notable are Debian Free Software Guidelines published in 1997, and The Open Source Definition, published in 1998.

The BSD-based operating systems, such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, do not have their own formal definitions of free software. Users of these systems generally find the same set of software to be acceptable, but sometimes see copyleft as restrictive. They generally advocate permissive free software licenses, which allow others to use the software as they wish, without being legally forced to provide the source code. Their view is that this permissive approach is more free. The Kerberos, X11, and Apache software licenses are substantially similar in intent and implementation.

Examples

Main article: List of free and open-source software packages

There are thousands of free applications and many operating systems available on the Internet. Users can easily download and install those applications via a package manager that comes included with most Linux distributions.

The Free Software Directory maintains a large database of free-software packages. Some of the best-known examples include Linux-libre, Linux-based operating systems, the GNU Compiler Collection and C library; the MySQL relational database; the Apache web server; and the Sendmail mail transport agent. Other influential examples include the Emacs text editor; the GIMP raster drawing and image editor; the X Window System graphical-display system; the LibreOffice office suite; and the TeX and LaTeX typesetting systems.

Free Software

• 
  Blender, a 3D computer graphics software.
• 
  KDE Plasma desktop on Debian.
   
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  OpenSSL's manual page.
   
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  Creating a 3D car racing game using the Blender Game Engine.
   
• 
  Replicant smartphone OS, an Android-based system that is 100% free software.
   
• 
  LibreOffice is a free multi-platform office suite.

History

Further information: History of free and open-source software

See also: Open-source software § History

From the 1950s up until the early 1970s, it was normal for computer users to have the software freedoms associated with free software, which was typically public-domain software. Software was commonly shared by individuals who used computers and by hardware manufacturers who welcomed the fact that people were making software that made their hardware useful. Organizations of users and suppliers, for example, SHARE, were formed to facilitate exchange of software. As software was often written in an interpreted language such as BASIC, the source code was distributed to use these programs. Software was also shared and distributed as printed source code (Type-in program) in computer magazines (like Creative Computing, SoftSide, Compute!, Byte, etc.) and books, like the bestseller BASIC Computer Games. By the early 1970s, the picture changed: software costs were dramatically increasing, a growing software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products (free in that the cost was included in the hardware cost), leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of "free" software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anti-competitive. While some software might always be free, there would henceforth be a growing amount of software produced primarily for sale. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the software industry began using technical measures (such as only distributing binary copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to study or adapt the software applications as they saw fit. In 1980, copyright law was extended to computer programs.

In 1983, Richard Stallman, one of the original authors of the popular Emacs program and a longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU Project, the purpose of which was to produce a completely non-proprietary Unix-compatible operating system, saying that he had become frustrated with the shift in climate surrounding the computer world and its users. In his initial declaration of the project and its purpose, he specifically cited as a motivation his opposition to being asked to agree to non-disclosure agreements and restrictive licenses which prohibited the free sharing of potentially profitable in-development software, a prohibition directly contrary to the traditional hacker ethic. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. He developed a free software definition and the concept of "copyleft", designed to ensure software freedom for all. Some non-software industries are beginning to use techniques similar to those used in free software development for their research and development process; scientists, for example, are looking towards more open development processes, and hardware such as microchips are beginning to be developed with specifications released under copyleft licenses (see the OpenCores project, for instance). Creative Commons and the free-culture movement have also been largely influenced by the free software movement.

1980s: Foundation of the GNU Project

In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU Project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto. The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and "copyleft" ideas.

1990s: Release of the Linux kernel

The Linux kernel, started by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. The first licence was a proprietary software licence. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License. Much like Unix, Torvalds' kernel attracted the attention of volunteer programmers. FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD) were released as free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, was released under the Apache License 1.0.

Licensing

Main article: Free-software license

Further information: Open-source license

See also: Free and open-source software § Licensing

Copyleft, a novel use of copyright law to ensure that works remain unrestricted, originates in the world of free software.

All free-software licenses must grant users all the freedoms discussed above. However, unless the applications' licenses are compatible, combining programs by mixing source code or directly linking binaries is problematic, because of license technicalities. Programs indirectly connected together may avoid this problem.

The majority of free software falls under a small set of licenses. The most popular of these licenses are:

• The MIT License
• The GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2)
• The Apache License
• The GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3)
• The BSD License
• The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
• The Mozilla Public License (MPL)
• The Eclipse Public License

The Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative both publish lists of licenses that they find to comply with their own definitions of free software and open-source software respectively:

• List of FSF approved software licenses
• List of OSI approved software licenses

The FSF list is not prescriptive: free-software licenses can exist that the FSF has not heard about, or considered important enough to write about. So it is possible for a license to be free and not in the FSF list. The OSI list only lists licenses that have been submitted, considered and approved. All open-source licenses must meet the Open Source Definition in order to be officially recognized as open source software. Free software, on the other hand, is a more informal classification that does not rely on official recognition. Nevertheless, software licensed under licenses that do not meet the Free Software Definition cannot rightly be considered free software.

Apart from these two organizations, the Debian project is seen by some to provide useful advice on whether particular licenses comply with their Debian Free Software Guidelines. Debian does not publish a list of approved licenses, so its judgments have to be tracked by checking what software they have allowed into their software archives. That is summarized at the Debian web site.

It is rare that a license announced as being in-compliance with the FSF guidelines does not also meet the Open Source Definition, although the reverse is not necessarily true (for example, the NASA Open Source Agreement is an OSI-approved license, but non-free according to FSF).

There are different categories of free software.

• Public-domain software: the copyright has expired, the work was not copyrighted (released without copyright notice before 1988), or the author has released the software onto the public domain with a waiver statement (in countries where this is possible). Since public-domain software lacks copyright protection, it may be freely incorporated into any work, whether proprietary or free. The FSF recommends the CC0 public domain dedication for this purpose.
• Permissive licenses, also called BSD-style because they are applied to much of the software distributed with the BSD operating systems. The author retains copyright solely to disclaim warranty and require proper attribution of modified works, and permits redistribution and any modification, even closed-source ones.
• Copyleft licenses, with the GNU General Public License being the most prominent: the author retains copyright and permits redistribution under the restriction that all such redistribution is licensed under the same license. Additions and modifications by others must also be licensed under the same "copyleft" license whenever they are distributed with part of the original licensed product. This is also known as a viral, protective, or reciprocal license.

Proponents of permissive and copyleft licenses disagree on whether software freedom should be viewed as a negative or positive liberty. Due to their restrictions on distribution, not everyone considers copyleft licenses to be free. Conversely, a permissive license may provide an incentive to create non-free software by reducing the cost of developing restricted software. Since this is incompatible with the spirit of software freedom, many people consider permissive licenses to be less free than copyleft licenses.

Security and reliability

Because Microsoft Windows is the dominant operating system, the majority of computer viruses target Windows. Antivirus software such as ClamTk (shown here) is provided for Linux and other Unix-based systems, so that users can detect malware that might infect Windows hosts.

There is debate over the security of free software in comparison to proprietary software, with a major issue being security through obscurity. A popular quantitative test in computer security is to use relative counting of known unpatched security flaws. Generally, users of this method advise avoiding products that lack fixes for known security flaws, at least until a fix is available.

Free software advocates strongly believe that this methodology is biased by counting more vulnerabilities for the free software systems, since their source code is accessible and their community is more forthcoming about what problems exist as a part of full disclosure, and proprietary software systems can have undisclosed societal drawbacks, such as disenfranchising less fortunate would-be users of free programs. As users can analyse and trace the source code, many more people with no commercial constraints can inspect the code and find bugs and loopholes than a corporation would find practicable. According to Richard Stallman, user access to the source code makes deploying free software with undesirable hidden spyware functionality far more difficult than for proprietary software.

Some quantitative studies have been done on the subject.

Binary blobs and other proprietary software

In 2006, OpenBSD started the first campaign against the use of binary blobs in kernels. Blobs are usually freely distributable device drivers for hardware from vendors that do not reveal driver source code to users or developers. This restricts the users' freedom effectively to modify the software and distribute modified versions. Also, since the blobs are undocumented and may have bugs, they pose a security risk to any operating system whose kernel includes them. The proclaimed aim of the campaign against blobs is to collect hardware documentation that allows developers to write free software drivers for that hardware, ultimately enabling all free operating systems to become or remain blob-free.

The issue of binary blobs in the Linux kernel and other device drivers motivated some developers in Ireland to launch gNewSense, a Linux-based distribution with all the binary blobs removed. The project received support from the Free Software Foundation and stimulated the creation, headed by the Free Software Foundation Latin America, of the Linux-libre kernel. As of October 2012, Trisquel is the most popular FSF endorsed Linux distribution ranked by Distrowatch (over 12 months). While Debian is not endorsed by the FSF and does not use Linux-libre, it is also a popular distribution available without kernel blobs by default since 2011.

The Linux community uses the term "blob" to refer to all nonfree firmware in a kernel whereas OpenBSD uses the term to refer to device drivers. The FSF does not consider OpenBSD to be blob free under the Linux community's definition of blob.

Business model

See also: Business models for open-source software

Selling software under any free-software licence is permissible, as is commercial use. This is true for licenses with or without copyleft.

Since free software may be freely redistributed, it is generally available at little or no fee. Free software business models are usually based on adding value such as customization, accompanying hardware, support, training, integration, or certification. Exceptions exist however, where the user is charged to obtain a copy of the free application itself.

Fees are usually charged for distribution on compact discs and bootable USB drives, or for services of installing or maintaining the operation of free software. Development of large, commercially used free software is often funded by a combination of user donations, crowdfunding, corporate contributions, and tax money. The SELinux project at the United States National Security Agency is an example of a federally funded free-software project.

Proprietary software, on the other hand, tends to use a different business model, where a customer of the proprietary application pays a fee for a license to legally access and use it. This license may grant the customer the ability to configure some or no parts of the software themselves. Often some level of support is included in the purchase of proprietary software, but additional support services (especially for enterprise applications) are usually available for an additional fee. Some proprietary software vendors will also customize software for a fee.

The Free Software Foundation encourages selling free software. As the Foundation has written, "distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!". For example, the FSF's own recommended license (the GNU GPL) states that "[you] may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated in 2001 that "open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source." This misunderstanding is based on a requirement of copyleft licenses (like the GPL) that if one distributes modified versions of software, they must release the source and use the same license. This requirement does not extend to other software from the same developer. The claim of incompatibility between commercial companies and free software is also a misunderstanding. There are several large companies, e.g. Red Hat and IBM (IBM acquired RedHat in 2019), which do substantial commercial business in the development of free software.

Economic aspects and adoption

Main article: Free and open-source software § Adoption

See also: Linux adoption and Open-source software § Adoption

Free software played a significant part in the development of the Internet, the World Wide Web and the infrastructure of dot-com companies. Free software allows users to cooperate in enhancing and refining the programs they use; free software is a pure public good rather than a private good. Companies that contribute to free software increase commercial innovation.

"We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable – one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could."

Official statement of the United Space Alliance, which manages the computer systems for the International Space Station (ISS), regarding their May 2013 decision to migrate ISS computer systems from Windows to Linux

The economic viability of free software has been recognized by large corporations such as IBM, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. Many companies whose core business is not in the IT sector choose free software for their Internet information and sales sites, due to the lower initial capital investment and ability to freely customize the application packages. Most companies in the software business include free software in their commercial products if the licenses allow that.

Free software is generally available at no cost and can result in permanently lower TCO (total cost of ownership) compared to proprietary software. With free software, businesses can fit software to their specific needs by changing the software themselves or by hiring programmers to modify it for them. Free software often has no warranty, and more importantly, generally does not assign legal liability to anyone. However, warranties are permitted between any two parties upon the condition of the software and its usage. Such an agreement is made separately from the free software license.

A report by Standish Group estimates that adoption of free software has caused a drop in revenue to the proprietary software industry by about $60 billion per year. Eric S. Raymond argued that the term free software is too ambiguous and intimidating for the business community. Raymond promoted the term open-source software as a friendlier alternative for the business and corporate world.