NewsForge: Commentary: Free Software on Windows

“I haven’t used Windows very often in the past seven or eight
years. I declared my independence on July 4, 1998, and I’ve never
looked back. Recently I was issued a company laptop. It came with
Windows XP preinstalled, of course, since it is an IBM ThinkPad and
only Microsoft operating systems are available preloaded on IBM
(and HP, and Dell) desktops and laptops destined for North American
consumers. I decided for various reasons to make the ThinkPad a
dual-boot machine. Color me surprised at what I’ve learned about
the Windows platform since. Who knew there is so much free–as in
speech–software available for Windows these days?

“Sure, there have always been ‘shareware’ and ‘freeware’
programs available for DOS and Windows. But free software as the
Free Software Foundation defines it is different. The short version
is that a program is deemed free if the source code is available,
you can modify the source code, and you can distribute the modified
version. If all those things are true–without restriction–then it
is free software…”

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