WEEK 7's LECTURE

TOPIC: Creative Commons & Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)

• The internet is used like a giant copy machine as it doesn't care whether the work it is copying has been copyrighted in the past or not.
• Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation; it has a set of licences that they have created for writers to stick to, if you want to put something on the internet and don't want certain parts of it to be copied you must sign up to an agreement with creative commons. To look at more about creative commons their website is located at, http://www.creativecommons.org/.
• Public domain is something which has no rights at all so anybody anywhere in the world can copy/use your work/creativity for their own use.

These are used as a simple way for creators to share their creative work with the world and the style they have, you are left with a choice to share your work or not which is referred to as 'access and control'.

Software has been created by programmers and they never use to charge for the programmes they wrote in the 1960's and 1970's they would just share it among one another because it was not very popular. These days practically every piece of software you must pay for because it has become very popular and large business depend on it to run certain things. These programs are written through source codes which is basically a set of instructions for the computer to follow so that it does what you want it to do.

A gentleman by the name of Richard Stallman started an organisation in 1981 called the Free Software Foundation, its aim was to be able to share certain software with the public free of charge which is where the operating system Linux and GNU came from. He created his own licence for freedom software which consisted of 4 Freedoms, the freedoms are as followed:

• Freedom 0 - The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
• Freedom 1 - The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
• Freedom 2 - The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
• Freedom 3 - The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

Freedoms have been put in place so that we are able to use our computer anyways we like, where as open source software has been created to brand it towards businesses.