Software practice · 1996
What is Free Software? The Free Software Definition
GNU Project · The Free Software Definition
The GNU Project’s criteria for free software: the four freedoms to run, study and change, redistribute, and share changes.
Read the text The whole poster as a web page
- Print from
- A2
- License
- CC BY-ND 4.0
- Source
- gnu.org
- Retrieved
- 27 September 2026
- Language
- English
- Rights holder
- Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Theme
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Print from A2: the smallest A size at which the body text is at least 8 pt.
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Edition
The English page of gnu.org, “Updated: $Date: 2026/06/09 17:46:09 $”. The title of the page is the title of the poster; its table of contents, which repeats the headings, is left out; its note on licensing questions is set smaller, as on the page. Links are set as plain text; the footnote call [1] is set as a superscript number and the footnote closes the text; straight apostrophes are set as typographic ones. In the History section each version number is set in bold at the head of its entry. The copyright and license notices at the foot of the page are in the footer, word for word. Nothing else is left out. The year is the first year of the copyright notice.
Rights
This page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Stated with the copyright notice “Copyright © 1996-2002, 2004-2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.” at the foot of https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html, linked to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/. CC BY-ND 4.0 allows sharing the material unadapted, with the name of the creator, the copyright notice, the license notice and its URI, and the URI of the material: the poster reproduces the whole page text without changing its words, and the footer gives the notices.
