Questions about determining what is free software

>How can it be determined if a piece of software is free?

Software is considered free if it satisfies the four software freedoms, as outlined by the FSF:
*The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
*The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
*The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
*The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).

The ability to do all these things using only free software is also implicitly demanded, and (for some circumstances) avoidance of any form of advertising (explicit or not) of proprietary software must also be satisfied.

>If I am installing software from Trisquels apt-get via
>the command line, is that software guaranteed to be free

Trisquel promises it will be free, and you can usually trust them on this. However, mistakes can be made; if you discover some available software is proprietary, report it and it should be dealt with.

>It is not clear to me if apt-get is distro specific or not.

It is in a sense; what software is available depends on the 'repositories' in which apt-get is told to look for software. The ones your apt-get is using will be listed in /etc/apt/sources.list; likely, they'll just be the standard Trisquel ones, which means you can trust them to deliver only free software.

>what tools do I have for determining if it is free?

I'm not sure if there's a better way (there probably is), but you can find the text of a program installed with apt-get's license in /usr/share/doc//copyright. If the license is free, the program's almost certainly free; otherwise, it's not. Occasionally, programs can be released under free licenses but not be free- the most common examples are Firefox and Thunderbird, which have their code released under a free license, but are non-free because their trademark policy prevents users from selling any Mozilla-branded programs.

>Is it fair to assume there is free software that may not be >listed in the FSF Free Software Directory?

Their definitely is. Most reasonably well-known free software will be listed, but any project which nobody has bothered/thought to list will be in the directory, even if it's free. Anyone who wants to, though, can do so- simply sign up for an FSF account (it's free) and edit the page.

>Is it all about a piece of software having a free license?

That's generally the main factor. Technically, the key thing is offering the 4(-6) freedoms listed above. A free license usually guarantees these; on occasions things like trademarks (e.g. Firefox) can get in the way, but that's exceedingly rare.

>I have been have been meaning to do more research about the >licenses but haven't gotten far so I am not too >knowledgeable,

That's OK! The FSF keeps a list of free licenses: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses. You'd be pretty lucky to find free software under a license not on that list, so it's a good guide. Apart from that, though, it's always possible to ask if you're not sure.

>is this even possible to determine before downloading and
>install the software?

If you check the program's website/page, it'll often list the license somewhere on there. Alternatively, if you found it via the 'apt search' command on Trisquel, it's probably a safe bet that it is free. Conversely, if there's no link to the source code on the download page and it's not hosted on a forge (e.g. NotABug, Github), then it's probably not free.

The free software definition in all its details: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

The "Free System Distribution Guidelines" (Trisquel adheres to them) in all their details: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

"Is it fair to assume there is free software that may not be listed in the FSF Free Software Directory?"

Yes - Not only fair, but likely.

"Is it all about a piece of software having a free license?"

Not necessarily, although that is one important thing. (I'm thinking of the freely-licensed blobs in the kernel named Linux, for example - Although they have a free license if you check the Free Software Definition, availability of source code is a prerequisite. So if there is no source code then it is automatically non-free, regardless of what the license might say.)

Other ways that freedom problems can arise are if a program is dependent on a non-free program, either in order to use the program or compile it. (This is also mentioned in the Free Software Definition.)

Start with reading Mr. Banana's links. It's a good place to get up to speed. Then, deeper and more involved questions can be had.

If you install software in Trisquel with apt-get is going to be really hard that you install proprietary software.

But if you use PPA's of Ubuntu this are not officialy supported by Trisquel and you have to check to make sure your freedom is not at risk.

If you are a programmer or you like to play with the system there is a chance you will be asked to install software from python with pip
pip install package

In that case or some other package manager I think npm on JavaScript, (I don't know much about this package managers) but you have to be careful about them. Most of them don't have a strong policy about free software. So even in Trisquel you could install non-free software.

Something similar happens to program's plugins. Just because a program is free doesn't mean the plugins are, so be careful if you download a plugin from Internet.

This also is applied to Firefox and Thunderbird plugins, even if MPL 2.0 is compatible with GPL the plugins they recommended are not necessarily Free Software.

Also, if you use Emacs or you ever start using Emacs you probably will be suggested to install MELPA (more plugins). I don't know about Vim but it also has lots of plugin's.

Bottom line Trisquel will protect your freedom with apt-get.

Apart from that, you are responsible of making sure other software you install is also libre. Which will probably be though.

Except from Firefox and Thunderbird most of the cases I mentioned rarely have non-free software.

Thanks for all the great info. I have been trying to figure out how to
respond to this thread via email all week, so I hope this is the way.

Thank you very much for your interest on knowing more about the
free/libre software movement.

To answer some of the questions we can split things into two sides:
practical and ideological. "Practical" means what you can see in
practice, and usually what you receive. "Ideological" is related to
opinions and behavior of people.

There are various things that *may* make functional/practical data/works
(also includes software) non-free, such as: licenses, patents,
trademarks, non-disclosure agreements, trade secrets, contracts (be it
verbal or written), laws, technologies used. However, for all those
things, it depends on how they impact the essential freedoms of
free/libre functional/practical data/works. "functional/practical
data/work" can be, for example: software, text fonts, documentation, and
many other things I won't say for now.

In the practical side, the freedom of some functional/practical
data/work can be checked by seeing if the licenses, patents, trademarks,
non-disclosure agreements, trade secrets, contracts, laws and
technologies that are applicable to it can be problematic to the
essential freedoms that we already know (I assume that you have already
read what each one of those freedoms are, and that you already know that
these freedoms must apply to everyone, without forbidding based on
discrimination of nature/type of usage). This also requires that the
work in question mustn't depend on other non-(free/libre) one in order
to be made available. For example: If A is non-free, and B depends on A,
then B is also non-free. There are some exceptions, but this is the
general case.

In the majority of the cases, if one wants to use some
functional/practical data/work, then evaluating the practical side is
enough. There are, however, some edge cases where the ideological side
might prove to be an issue. This can be noticed in the difference
between "free/libre software proponents" and "open source proponents".

While both proponents work together in most cases and projects, the open
source ones don't speak of the freedom of the practical/functional
data/work, they think that simply appealing to "consumer values" is
enough. Free/libre software proponents can also rely on those "consumer
values", but they must make it clear that the essential freedoms exist
and that these are most important.

While the Open Source Definition is very similar to the Free Software
Definition, and while both of those forbid digital handcuffs (this is
not an absolute synonym for "non-(free/libre) software", it's a
subset/subtype of it), what ends up happening is that the open source
proponents allow digital handcuffs to be implemented in the
products/projects that depend on the projects/products provided by these
open source proponents.

As an example of open source but not free/libre product/project we have
Android project. The people behind Android project are allowing
manufacturers to implement digital handcuffs via Restricted Boot (not
Secure Boot), this completely forbids you from replacing the Android
*itself* that you have with any other from anyone you trust, because the
manufacturer won't allow you to tell the phone/tablet *who* you trust
(example: you). Some tablets/phones have only Secure Boot (which allows
you to define who to trust) or don't have any (which allows everything,
even untrusted updates). Note that we are not talking about application
updates, nor about the updates that Android itself tells you to do.

There are more differences, but I'll let Bradley "bkuhn" Kuhn do the
talking (optiona):
[[https://sfconservancy.org/videos/2015-01-15_Bradley-Kuhn_Future-of-Copyleft_LCA-2015.mp4]],
[[https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/sep/29/vw/]],
[[https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/copyleft-for-the-next-decade-a-comprehensive-plan/]].

Now for the other questions:

About software downloaded using apt-get: They are free/libre as long as
they come from Trisquel's default repositories. Some people tend to
suggest adding "PPA" or "editing source.list", but I recommend you to
avoid it unless the maintainer of the "PPA" in question is indeed a
free/libre software activist. In fact, I found out that some individual
packages from third-parties (not related to us free/libre software
community) often add more PPAs without the user's consent.

apt-get isn't distro specific. However, some distros choose to use it by
default, while some others use other package managers.

About the Free Software Directory: it's a collaborative attempt to list
free/libre software. However, it's not always perfect, and somethings
might be missing. It's better to complement the checking by visiting the
other free/libre distros' default repositories and paying attention to
any differences between what you are installing and what the other
free/libre distros would tell the user to install. The Free Software
Directory, as I just said, is a collaborative effort, and as such, if
you can, please consider making small contributions to it (simply making
a new entry with the package name, a short description and where to find
it, is enough to at least make other volunteers know about it so that
the reviewers/evaluators can check if it's free/libre or not).

--
- [[https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno]]
- Palestrante e consultor sobre /software/ livre (não confundir com
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aceito, mas não repasso. Entrego apenas em formatos favoráveis ao
/software/ livre. Favor entrar em contato em caso de dúvida.