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Software used
towards administering The Promotion Group
Utilities | Content Systems | Tools
In order to update our sites on a regular basis, The Promotion Group utilizes open source or free software to make the task easier. These are software programs whose licenses give users the freedom to run the program for any purpose.
The GNU Project web server, www.gnu.org (GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not UNIX"; it is pronounced "guh-noo".) is also the web site of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). FSF is the principal organizational sponsor of the GNU Project. FSF receives very little funding from corporations or grant-making foundations, and relies on support from individuals who support FSF's mission to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of Free Software users.
While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas.
In 1998, some of the people in the free software community began using the term 'open source software' instead of free software to describe what they do. The term "open source'' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals, although we can and do work together on some practical projects.
The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.'' For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.
Source : GNU.org
