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Stallman Song)
Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software which ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License. Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to write a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. With that he also launched the free software movement. He has been the GNU project's lead architect and organizer, and developed a number of pieces of widely used GNU software including among others, the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Debugger, and GNU Emacs text editor. Stallman pioneered the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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, distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program.Selling Free Software (GNU) Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users (not just the developer) ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices. The right to study and modify a computer program entails that the source code—the preferred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copy Protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, is any measure to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, HD-DVDs, computer software discs, video game discs and cartridges, audio CDs and some VCDs. It also may be incorporated into digitally distributed versions of media and software. Some methods of copy protection have also led to criticism because it caused inconvenience for paying consumers or secretly installed additional or unwanted software to detect copying activities on the consumer's computer. Making copy protection effective while protecting consumer rights remains a problem with media publication. Terminology Media corporations have always used the term copy protection, but critics argue that the term tends to sway the public into identifying with the publishers, who favor restriction technolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Protection Dongle
A software protection dongle (commonly known as a dongle or key) is an electronic copy protection and content protection device. When connected to a computer or other electronics, they unlock software functionality or decode content. The hardware key is programmed with a product key or other cryptographic protection mechanism and functions via an electrical connector to an external bus of the computer or appliance. In software protection, dongles are two-interface security tokens with transient data flow with a pull communication that reads security data from the dongle. In the absence of these dongles, certain software may run only in a restricted mode, or not at all. In addition to software protection, dongles can enable functions in electronic devices, such as receiving and processing encoded video streams on television sets. Etymology The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that the "First known use of dongle" was in 1981 and that the etymology was "perhaps nalteration of d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Product Activation
Product activation is a license validation procedure required by some proprietary software programs. Product activation prevents unlimited free use of copied or replicated software. Unactivated software refuses to fully function until it ''determines'' whether it is authorized to fully function. Activation allows the software to stop blocking its use. An activation can last "forever", or it can have a time limit, requiring a renewal or re-activation for continued use. Product activation is often based on verification of a product key, which is a sequence of letters and/or numbers that is verified via an algorithm or mathematical formula, for a particular solution or set of solutions, possibly combined with verification in a database or some other method for verification which can be done via the internet. If the solution matches expectations, and verification confirms that the product key is genuine, the product is activated. Using hashing, it is possible to represent letters as num ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-disclosure Agreement
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), or secrecy agreement (SA), is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to. Doctor–patient confidentiality (physician–patient privilege), attorney–client privilege, priest–penitent privilege and bank–client confidentiality agreements are examples of NDAs, which are often not enshrined in a written contract between the parties. It is a contract through which the parties agree not to disclose any information covered by the agreement. An NDA creates a confidential relationship between the parties, typically to protect any type of confidential and proprietary information or trade secrets. As such, an NDA protects non-public bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
End-user License Agreement
An end-user license agreement or EULA () is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer or end-user. The practice of selling licenses to rather than copies of software predates the recognition of software copyright, which has been recognized since the 1970s in the United States. Initially, EULAs were often printed as shrink wrap contracts, where tearing the shrink wrap indicated acceptance. Software distributed via the internet is more commonly licensed via clickwrap (where the user clicks to agree to the license) or browsewrap (continuing to browse the website indicates agreement). Most companies prefer to sell licenses rather than copies of the software because it enables them to enforce stricter terms on the end user in a number of domains, especially by prohibiting transfer of ownership or use on multiple computers, and by asserting ownership of the copyright of derivative works, such as user-generated content in video games. Enforceability of EULAs has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use, modification and distribution of copyrighted works (e.g. software, multimedia content) and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption. Laws in many countries criminalize the circumvention of DRM, communication about such circumvention, and the creation and distribution of tools used for such circumvention. Such laws are part of the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the European Union's Information Society Directive – with the French DADVSI an example of a member state of the European Union implementing that directive. Copyright holders argue that DRM technologies are necessary to protect intellectual proper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Patent Debate
The software patent debate is the argument about the extent to which, as a matter of public policy, it should be possible to patent software and computer-implemented inventions. Policy debate on software patents has been active for years. The opponents to software patents have gained more visibility with fewer resources through the years than their pro-patent opponents. Arguments and critiques have been focused mostly on the economic consequences of software patents. One aspect of the debate has focused on the proposed European Union directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions, also known as the "CII Directive" or the "Software Patent Directive," which was ultimately rejected by the EU Parliament in July 2005. Arguments for patentability There are several arguments commonly given in defense of software patents or defense of the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. Public disclosure * Through public disclosure, patents encourage the open s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
League For Programming Freedom
League for Programming Freedom (LPF) was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of copyright. Their logo is the Statue of Liberty holding a floppy disk and tape spool. Among other initiatives, the League started the "Burn all GIFs" campaign in opposition to the actions of Unisys in enforcing their patent on LZW compression used by CompuServe when creating the image format. The League produced a newsletter, ''Programming Freedom'', in 11 issues from 1991 to 1995. These primary source materials chronicle the work of the organization. The single event that had the most influence on the creation of the League was Apple's lawsuits against Microsoft about supposed copyrights violations of the look and feel of the Macintosh in the development of Windows. After the lawsuit ended, the League went dormant, to be resurrected by those who were increa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Software License
A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software (or free and open-source software) as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms. Comparison Free-software licenses provide risk mitigation against different legal threats or behaviors that are seen as potentially harmful by developers: History Pre-1980s In the early times of software, sharing of software and source code was common in certain communities, for instance academic institutions. Before the US Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GNU Debugger
The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, Assembly, C, C++, D, Fortran, Haskell, Go, Objective-C, OpenCL C, Modula-2, Pascal, Rust, and partially others. It detects problems in a program while letting it run and allows users to examine different registers. History GDB was first written by Richard Stallman in 1986 as part of his GNU system, after his GNU Emacs was "reasonably stable". GDB is free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was modeled after the DBX debugger, which came with Berkeley Unix distributions. From 1990 to 1993 it was maintained by John Gilmore. Now it is maintained by the GDB Steering Committee which is appointed by the Free Software Foundation. Technical details Features GDB offers extensive facilities for tracing and altering the execution of computer programs. The user can monitor and modify the values of programs' intern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
