Free software, unlike proprietary, respects its users essential rights, to ensure they can:
- run the program, for any purpose
- study how the program works, and adapt it to their needs (which requires having access to the program's source code).
- redistribute copies so they can help others
- distribute copies of their modified versions to others, so that the whole community can benefit. Again, access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The word "free" in free software has nothing to do with price, though free software is nearly always distributed without a fee. It has everything to do with freedom, in the same sense as the word "free" in the phrase "free speech". With free software, you may possibly never find yourself in the situation of being asked for a copy of a program, or may never intend to study or modify a program's source code, but you still would not want to deny others the right to do these things, because they are essential freedoms.
