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NAME="FREESOFTWARE"
>You've said that GNOME is Free Software.  What does Free
      Software mean?</A
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><P
>Most software licenses are designed to limit the users
      freedom to use, examine, modify and distribute the software.  In
      the GNOME project, and the Free Software community in general,
      we believe that such restrictions are unethical, and we endeavor
      to produce quality software that is free of such restrictions.
      This is what we call Free Software.  Traditionally, it has
      referred to software which allows three types of freedom:</P
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>The freedom to study how the program works and adapt
	  it to your needs.</P
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>The freedom to redistribute copies so you can share
	  with your neighbor.</P
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>The freedom to improve the program, and release your
	  improvements to the public, so that the whole community
	  benefits.</P
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>More recently, a fourth freedom has started being
      restricted by licenses, the freedom to use the software.  Since
      software licenses are based on copyright law, and copyright law
      only addresses distribution, not use, we assumed that freedom of
      use goes without saying.  Suffice it to say that while freedom
      of use is not part of the traditional definition of Free
      Software, the concept does include that freedom.</P
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>If the following paragraph is hard to understand in
	translation, forgive me.  Unlike most languages, in English
	the word used in both &#8220;free beer&#8221; and &#8220;free
	speech&#8221; is <TT
CLASS="LITERAL"
>free</TT
>.  This causes some
	confusion when discussing Free Software.</P
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><P
>Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price.  To
      understand the concept, think "Free Speech" not "Free Beer".
      The Free Software community is not at all against the concept of
      selling copies of software, or programmers making a living.  We are
      not against commercial software, we are against
      proprietary software.  For more information, check out the
      articles at <A
HREF="http://gnu.org/philosophy"
TARGET="_top"
>      http://gnu.org/philosophy</A
>.</P
><P
>In the GNOME project, we protect the user's freedom by
      using the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser
      General Public License (LGPL, formerly known as the GNU Library
      GPL).  These licenses are carefully designed with legal advice
      to produce a &#8220;copyleft&#8221;.  That is a copyrighted
      work that guarantees that it will always be freely
      redistributable.  This is by making sure that modifications and
      derivative works are also covered under the GPL.</P
><P
>The main GNOME applications (and a few of the libraries)
      are covered under the GPL.  Most of the core GNOME libraries use
      the LGPL, to allow other free (and proprietary) software
      licenses to be used when making GNOME software, while still
      protecting the libraries from being restricted.</P
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