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Open Closed Source System

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GNU was created in 1984 by computer programmer Richard A. Stallman who was affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology also known as MIT. Richard Stallman was also known as “The Last Hacker” to the IT community. Richard Stallman devoted his time and energy to develop a way to make software free with no price to all users and programmers. Due to Richard Stallman’s devotion to free software to all it has led to major software developers to pursue the idea as well and in doing so has created free Java software and other software to users.
The General Public License also called GNU is a copy left license for software and other types of programs. GNU allows a programmer or user the freedom to run, copy, distribute study, change, create, and improve software for users. The software is free to the public and creates innovation for program and software developers to learn from other developers. Programs and software not considered free to the user is referred as non-free or propriety programs and this translates to the user the program controls the user and the developer controls the user, this is considers the program is an instrument of unjust power to the user.
The GNU Public License provides a form of trust to the users and the developers by providing rights to other users to use and alter other programs. The rights for a user consist of a programmer who develops a program and wants to distribute this program through GNU the developer must allow other users the ability whether by gratis or by fee give an user open access to the source code of the program followed by the rights to the user who decides to access the source code. There are two steps of rights developers must abide by; the first right is asserting copy rights of the software to all users who wish to utilize the program. The second step of rights offers the license of the software to the user and permitting the user legal permission to change, copy, distribute, and modify the software. The free software available to all users is not warrant for defects or errors and the developer cannot be held reliable for faults to the program. Some modified software may have problems running of some operating systems due to manufactures prohibiting certain modified software that may be patented and due to this the General Public Licensing uses different provisions to extend other alternatives through copyright laws to create ways for software to properly operate on the operating system.

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. (Copyright © 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <http://fsf.org/>). Retrieved from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

New York Times. (2013). BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY; One Man's Fight for Free Software. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/11/business/business-technology-one-man-s-fight-for-free-software.html

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