Summary

The Free Software movement and open source community have changed the way that people look at pro bono software development. The GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache Web server, and the Python object-oriented scripting language (just to name a few) have resulted from distributed and sometimes ad hoc development around the world. Free and open software licenses have been created to protect free software and maintain it as free, but differences exist depending upon the goal. Free software development isnt a panacea to todays software development issues, as it does suffer from the same issues of proprietary software development.