Freely redistributable software (FRS) is

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

that anyone is free to redistribute. The term has been used to mean two types of free-to-redistribute software, distinguished by the legal modifiability and limitations on the purpose of use of the software. FRS which can be legally modified and used for any purpose is the same as

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

. Non-legally modifiable FRS is

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

, or similar. The non-modifiable FRS generally comes in the form of

executable In computer science, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instruction (computer science), in ...

binaries.

Proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

companies and authors often use it to showcase their work or encourage users to buy full products from them (in the case of

, demo, or trial versions). Freeware that is not restricted to be obtained from a specific distributor is also FRS.

Firmware and microcode

In cases of

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

microcode In processor design, microcode serves as an intermediary layer situated between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. It consists of a set of hardware-level instructions ...

, it is acceptable for major open-source projects like

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

to include a binary firmware of a device within the distribution, as long as said firmware runs only on the external device in question and not on the main CPU where the operating system itself is running. However, for such inclusion to be in place, the binary firmware must be distributed under an adequate license, like ISC or

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

, and must not require a discriminatory contract to be in place. A lack of such a license is why wireless devices from

Intel Corporation Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer components such as central processing ...

do not work out of the box in almost all open-source distributions, whereas Ralink wireless cards work just fine. See also
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References

{{software distribution Software licensing