>How can it be determined if a piece of software is free?
Software is considered free if it satisfies the four software freedoms, as
outlined by the FSF:
*The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
*The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your
computing as you wish (freedom 1).
*The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom
2).
*The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3).
The ability to do all these things using only free software is also
implicitly demanded, and (for some circumstances) avoidance of any form of
advertising (explicit or not) of proprietary software must also be satisfied.
>If I am installing software from Trisquels apt-get via
>the command line, is that software guaranteed to be free
Trisquel promises it will be free, and you can usually trust them on this.
However, mistakes can be made; if you discover some available software is
proprietary, report it and it should be dealt with.
>It is not clear to me if apt-get is distro specific or not.
It is in a sense; what software is available depends on the 'repositories' in
which apt-get is told to look for software. The ones your apt-get is using
will be listed in /etc/apt/sources.list; likely, they'll just be the standard
Trisquel ones, which means you can trust them to deliver only free software.
>what tools do I have for determining if it is free?
I'm not sure if there's a better way (there probably is), but you can find
the text of a program installed with apt-get's license in
/usr/share/doc//copyright. If the license is free, the program's almost
certainly free; otherwise, it's not. Occasionally, programs can be released
under free licenses but not be free- the most common examples are Firefox and
Thunderbird, which have their code released under a free license, but are
non-free because their trademark policy prevents users from selling any
Mozilla-branded programs.
>Is it fair to assume there is free software that may not be >listed in the
FSF Free Software Directory?
Their definitely is. Most reasonably well-known free software will be listed,
but any project which nobody has bothered/thought to list will be in the
directory, even if it's free. Anyone who wants to, though, can do so- simply
sign up for an FSF account (it's free) and edit the page.
>Is it all about a piece of software having a free license?
That's generally the main factor. Technically, the key thing is offering the
4(-6) freedoms listed above. A free license usually guarantees these; on
occasions things like trademarks (e.g. Firefox) can get in the way, but
that's exceedingly rare.
>I have been have been meaning to do more research about the >licenses but
haven't gotten far so I am not too >knowledgeable,
That's OK! The FSF keeps a list of free licenses:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses. You'd be
pretty lucky to find free software under a license not on that list, so it's
a good guide. Apart from that, though, it's always possible to ask if you're
not sure.
>is this even possible to determine before downloading and
>install the software?
If you check the program's website/page, it'll often list the license
somewhere on there. Alternatively, if you found it via the 'apt search'
command on Trisquel, it's probably a safe bet that it is free. Conversely, if
there's no link to the source code on the download page and it's not hosted
on a forge (e.g. NotABug, Github), then it's probably not free.
