Free software

The free software movement was conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman to give the benefit of "software freedom" to computer users. From the late 1990s onward, alternative terms for free software came into use. The most common are "software libre", "free and open source software" ("FOSS") and "free, libre and open-source software" ("FLOSS"). The "Software Freedom Law Center" was founded in 2005 to protect and advance FLOSS. The antonym of free software is "proprietary software" or "non-free software".