Re: [Fsfe-uk] Why FS is a Good Thing

[Ramin Nakisa]

Here's the latest draft incorporating almost all of the very helpful 
suggestions you made.  It fits on one sheet of A4 but I had to use \small 
environment 8-/.

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\title{Free Software}

\begin{small}
  
  Science owes its explosive growth over the past century to the free
  and open exchange of ideas.  As Isaac Newton said in a letter to his
  colleague Robert Hooke dated 5 February 1676, ``If I have seen
  further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.''  Free
  Software is in the process of recreating this explosion of ideas in
  the world of Information Technology.  Free Software such as that
  distributed under the GNU General Public License ensures that people
  are free to make improvements and redistribute software, but must
  always make the source code available.  Any software released under
  the GNU General Public License ensures four freedoms: (i) the
  freedom to run the program, for any purpose, (ii) the freedom to
  study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs, (iii) the
  freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others and (iv) the
  freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the
  public, so that the whole community benefits.

\begin{itemize}
  
\item Most software is written in-house and never sold, and in this
  case software patents are a hindrance.  Free Software is not a
  commodity, rather it is more like infrastructure - freely available
  to all businesses and an enabler of progress and innovation.
  
\item Free Software is often distributed for no cost.  This can save
  around 20\% of the cost of every computer in an organisation,
  because although hardware has become consistently cheaper personal
  computer operating systems have increased in price.
  
\item Free Software is bankruptcy-proof.  It is usually stored on
  globally available software repositories and will outlive any
  company or organisation that created it.  While the community of
  people that use and maintain the project continue to exist, the
  software will persist and develop.
  
\item Support for Free Software is often much better than support for
  proprietary software.  Newsgroups exist where users post questions
  and receive prompt and helpful replies.  People are encouraged to
  report bugs and these are often fixed within a few weeks.
  
\item Most people use computers to write documents and presentations,
  read email and browse the Web.  Free Software exists to perform all
  of these tasks.
  
\item Many thousands of Free Software projects exist (see the Free
  Software directory at http://www.gnu.org/directory/).  Some of the
  most successful include:

\begin{description}
\item [GNU/Linux] an operating system (like Microsoft Windows).
\item [KDE, Gnome, GNUstep and XFCE] desktop environments (attractive
  and easy to use interfaces for GNU/Linux).
\item [OpenOffice] a word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation
  package that is compatible with Microsoft Office.
\item [Mozilla] an Internet browser that shares code with Netscape.
\item [Apache] is industry standard software used to run web sites
  (used by Amazon.com, the German government, Walmart, the US
  Whitehouse and Federal Bureau of Investigation).
\item [Beowulf] for parallel computing (used for climate change
  simulations, particle physics computations and medical drug
  discovery applications).
\end{description}

\item Many companies have invested heavily in Free Software.  IBM has
  invested over \$2 billion in GNU/Linux, and now sells many of its
  computers from laptops to million-pound mainframes with GNU/Linux
  pre-installed.

\end{itemize}

\end{small}
\end{document}