Android and Free Software

Google's Android operating system has had tremendous success in the last few years , there are now over a a billion active devices that use Android Operating System. The success of Android has been wonderful for Free and Open Source software although Android is not totally FREE, some of the device drivers are proprietary . However it is big step into moving towards the free software regime.

We have come to a time when smart phones have become as powerful as computers that existed a decade ago. For ordinary users who are not developers or coders , whose computing needs are limited to surfing the Internet and creating a few documents, watching videos , capturing videos and taking pictures, smart phones and tablets are more than enough. Smart phones and tablets are cheaper and easier to carry around.

Android now is the most popular Operating System for smart phones and tablets. The Android can be considered a version of Linux considering the fact that it uses a modified version of the Linux Kernel. The source code of Android is available to users after the release.

However its runs on select devices and does not come with the code of the device drivers of certain components that are proprietary. One can download Android from the website free of cost, Google makes money from Android by selling apps made by developers on Google Play store. Not all apps are priced but for those apps that have a price tag to it, Google takes 30% of the amount.

      While Android is enjoying its day in the sun very soon it will have competition from the likes of Ubuntu touch, Tizen, Firefox OS and Jolla SailFish . Firefox OS maybe the real FREE software(free in terms of freedom ) that Android may have to contain with. The beneficiary of this competition will be the users around the globe .

One can clearly see that smart phones and tablets are converging towards desktops, as the processing power goes up and the RAM and storage increase. So in the future one may be using GNU/LINUX or the GNU operating system (with the HURD kernal ) directly from his/her tablet or smart phone.

Currently Google recommends 512Mb of RAM for Android operating system, in 2004 that is 10 years ago desktops used to have 256Mb of RAM , we have quadracore and octacore ARM processors  with over 1Ghz of clock speed. So it is clear from this that mobile devices are closing in on laptops and desktops.



Also android is the operating system of Google Glass the gadget that promises to change the way we use mobiles and computers. One can visit Google Play and find huge number of apps as on June 2014 one can find 1.2 million apps there, both paid and free.



With tablets and smart phones that run on Android or will run in the near future in any one of the above mentioned Free operating systems , the digital world is now successfully coming out of slavery of Microsoft Windows. 

For two and half decades the users were not being able to use any other operating system other than Microsoft Windows and before that MS – Dos. GNU/LINUX was then considered to be only for Geeks and not for ordinary users.



Its wonderful to see that with Android the world has taken a big step towards usage of Free Software and the above mentioned operating systems particularly Firefox OS will have more freedom associated with it , in real terms it can be called a Free Software. Bringing the the vision Free Software Foundation to reality. 
         
[Note when Free Software is mentioned it means software that is free in terms of freedom not necessarily free in terms of price.]

GNU (GNU is Not Unix)

       As the title of these blog suggests the full form of GNU is GNU is Not Unix.The father of Free Software Movement Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation in 1983. There is an interesting description he gives as to why he started the Free Software Foundation , while working at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the 1970s he says they lived in an Free Software Enviroment there were lots of operating systems and other software with source codes available alongwith freedom to modify and distribute them in the community  but by the 1980s things changed and free software kept disappearing and the enviroment changed to more of proprietry software which Stallman felt was ugly , morally ugly.

           So Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation in 1983 with a goal to make it possible to use software and have freedom. For that to be practicle they needed an Operating System that was Free the only free OS at that time was PDP 10 which was obsolete in 1980s and so was many of the software that they had previously written.

         So they decided to build an operating system that was UNIX like and was totally FREE. For this the GNU project was started to build the GNU operating system.The following question was asked to Richard Stallman regarding the journey of  building the GNU OS (it is followed by the detailed answer given by RMS)

What was the journey to develop GNU/Linux like?

We had to start from a point that was just a little more than zero, and work our way up to freedom. There were a few free programs in 1983 when I started GNU, but those were in no way near a whole OS. There was a lot of work to do, and during the 1980s, we did it. There are hundreds of components that you need to have a UNIX-like OS, even at the most basic level. A few components we found with somebody else, who wrote them for different reasons, but were free software. But the other components we had to develop.

So I wrote some of them, and recruited people to write others, and in some cases, convinced people to develop free programs — for instance, the CSRG (Computer Systems Research Group) at Berkeley. They had written a lot of code to change UNIX, but their code was mixed in AT&T’s code, and so was proprietary. I met them in 1984 and requested them to separate their software and release it as free, which they subsequently did. I wanted to use that code in the GNU system.

By 1992, we had almost the complete GNU system, but one essential component was missing: the kernel. We started developing one in 1990. I chose an advanced design, which gave it somewhat the character of a research project, and it took six years to get a test version. Unfortunately, nobody succeeds every time. But we didn’t have to wait, because in February 1992, Linus Torvalds, who had a proprietary kernel called Linux, decided to make it free. The combination of the Linux kernel with the rest of the GNU system made a complete OS, which was basically GNU, but also contained Linux. So calling it only the Linux OS is wrong; it is the GNU/Linux OS.

 So you see what we call today LINUX  is actually GNU+LINUX it should be described as GNU/LINUX people are of the misconception that it was LINUS Trovalds who started it off Linus provided the Kernel to the GNU project and and GNU/LINUX  came into existence being free is was constantly developed and improved upon  to our present day Fedora,Debian,Android,Ubuntu,Mint and thousands of other distributions of GNU/LINUX .           

          

FREE SOFTWARE

First of all lets begin with the term Free Software- free software stands for freedom associated with a software not necessarily price. As we know software unlike furniture or car is not not a physical object but an conceptual object that is expressed in the forms of computer insturctions and data which execute to do a specific task. One property a software has is that it can be copied multiple times once made if one has the source code it can be ported across various platforms you will never have the above privileges with physical goods like furniture ,clothes etc. So incase of software as mentioned before its simply programmes and data now there are kinds of software in existence today a) Proprietry Software b) Free Software

Proprietry software is software which one has to buy or is given for free but the orginal developer of the software retains the source code of the software and does not give it to the user. Examples are all the Windows Operating Systems,Adobe Photoshop etc. In case of propritery software the user does not have the freedom to modify or distribute the original or modified copies of the software. The user is controlled by the software rather than the software controlling the user.

Free software is either bought or downloaded or distributed free of cost. In case of free software the author of the software provides the entire source code of the software to the user ,the user of the software has total freedom to study the source code of the software,modify it as per his wish and distribute the original as well as modified copies of the software either for a fee or absolutely free of cost .It is this freedom of free software that makes it great , the examples of free software are GNU/LINUX ,GCC, Mozilla Firefox etc. In case of free software its the user that controls the software rather than being controlled by it take for example Richard Stallman the founder of the Free Software Foundation when he was working at the AI lab of MIT modified the device driver code of a Xerox Laser printer because of which the printer automatically sent a mail to user when his job was done and in case of a paper jam it would mail all the users about it.

The major advantage that Free Software offers is customization as

per users need since the source code of the software is available to them. Again you are free to share any change that is made in the orginal software ,this is how GNU/LINUX has grown it all started off as a final

year project of Linus Trovalds he made the kernal and released its source code other developers around the world joined in and since the code us openly available to everyone and everyone had freedom to modify the code they kept making little improvements in Linux and it grew into a powerful OS being used by most of the supercomputers ,servers and a few home computers across the world.

The following are the four freedoms thats essential for a software to be free:

Freedom 0: Freedom to run the software as per the wish of the user.

Freedom 1: Freedom to study the source code and modify it as per

his her wish.

Freedom 2: Freedom to distribute the copies of the original software.

Freedom 3: Freedom to distribute the copies of the the modified versions of the software.

Being a Free Software enthusiast I wish to see all the people around the world using free software.

                                                              

                                                                  Rakesh Mallick