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Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Freedom Zero 

"The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)"
From the Free Software Definition


Here you can see a very practical way that freedom zero is implemented in SUSE Linux 10.1. The dialog above is used to add applications to your computer. Every type of application is listed. The selected program is OpenOffice.org, a free office suite.

This dialog may be used to find, download, and install software from the Internet as well as from CD or DVD. All applications are freely available and may be used on as many computers as you like without charge. The license agreement (the GNU General Public License, or GPL) guarantees your right to do so.

Contrast this with the way proprietary software is marketed and distributed for Windows.