Open source is necessary but not sufficient

The term "open source" focuses on one technical aspect of software freedom: what you're allowed to do with the code it's written in. 

We think there's a more expansive way to understand software freedom. Software isn't just code, it's a set of tools that human beings use to learn, collaborate, create, socialise, and play. How we choose and use software isn't a purely technical question, it's an expression of the ethical frameworks we bring to our dealings with other human beings. So at Magnificent, we like to use a term that emphasises ethics over code.

The word 'libre' comes from Romance languages like Spanish and French. It conveys concepts of freedom and liberty, or  'without restriction'. It can also connote 'generous', 'selfless', and even 'belonging to the people'. 

People also use the term free software, or free and open source software (FOSS)  for the same idea. However, in English "free" can mean either free-from-constraints, but it can also mean free-of-monetary-cost. At Magnificent we do charge: not for the software itself, but for the service of hosting, configuring, maintaining, and updating your applications so you don't have to. That distinction doesn't need to hijack every conversation,  but we like to use a word up front that doesn't carry the ambiguity.

What makes software libre?

For software to qualify as libre, its creators must grant four rights:

• the right to use the software for any purpose,
• the right to study how the software works, and modify it to make it do what you wish,
• the right to redistribute the software, and
• the right to distribute your modified version of the software to the public, under the same terms. 

In practice, these rights are embedded in a copyright licence for each application that puts them in formal legal terms. There are a variety of different licences that express these rights in different words. Libre software inherently acknowledges the concept of digital abundance - that digital artefacts like software can be replicated infinitely many times at no incremental cost to the creator.

Libre software is also defined by what it isn't. Proprietary software holds back some or all of these rights for the creator or the company they work for, using intellectual property law to create a legal monopoly and prevent you from sharing or modifying their software. This creates artificial scarcity, so that software is treated like a physical object that's owned and controlled by someone else. 

Libre, free, FOSS, open source... it's all good

We find the term libre helps us think about what we're trying to do with software, but we don't insist on it. What's important is that the creators of all the applications we offer have made them available to the public. You're free to install them on your own computer without needing to pay, so long as you have the expertise and access to suitable computing infrastructure.