Free Software Logo

Robert Martinez @mray@social.tchncs.de has created a logo for Free Software. He has released the logo using a public domain dedication for all of us to use (Thanks!): Logo Source

I do hope this logo will catch on. Free Software is a much more powerful concept than "open source" because it involves copyleft, the idea that all modifications to the original freely available software should be, and must be, available to the entire user community. By contrast, open source licensing of software does NOT uniformly expect that improvements will be universally available. The common "liberal" licenses allow for the original code to be captured by a proprietary, locked down version. The improved version need NOT be available freely for use, study, modification and redistribution. Those "four freedoms" are at the core of Free Software.

The Free Software Foundation has a very clear picture of how the concept works: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html. You will benefit yourself and others if you read and understand the idea...and then embrace it!

Robert Martinez's work immediately inspired me to do a riff on the logo to show how the Free Software ethic involves those freedoms.

I'm a big fan of Free Software. How about you?

Virtual Cycle Source file (Inkscape SVG): FreeSoftwareLogo-virtuous.svg