Ira Heffan

The Free Software Foundation was founded when software was becoming increasingly proprietary and restricted, with software vendors asserting more and more control over what customers could do with their software. Resisting that trend, FSF founder Richard Stallman wrote that software should be "Free as in Freedom"; users should have the freedom to use software for any purpose, to have source code available, to modify the source code, and to share their improvements. Although today software is not as "free" as Richard Stallman would wish, in many ways his broader vision has come to pass. Thousands of useful programs are widely available and, if not "free," at least open source. Many such programs enjoy widespread commercial use. Software that is developed under review by the community is believed to be of higher quality because of the number of experienced eyes findin... (more)