Business Process Management(BPM) The FSF recommends using the term free software and never open source
software because that term and the associated marketing campaign focuses
on technical issues and avoids talking about the value of freedom.
Libre is used to avoid the ambiguity of the word free. However libre is
mostly used within the free software movement.
DefinitionMain articles The Free Software Definition Debian Free
Software Guidelines and Open Source Definition The first formal definition
of free software was published by FSF in FebruaryThat definition written
by Richard Stallman is still maintained today and states that software
is free software if people who receive a copy of the software have the
following four freedoms FreedomThe freedom to run the program for any
purpose.
FreedomThe freedom to study and modify the program.FreedomThe freedom
to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.FreedomThe freedom to
improve the program and release your improvements to the public so
that the whole community benefits. Freedomsandrequire source code to be
available because studying and modifying software without its source code
is highly impractical.
Free software
Thus free software means that computer users have the freedom to
cooperate with whom they choose and to control the software they use. To
summarise this into a remark distinguishing libre freedom software from
gratis zero price software Richard Stallman has long said Free software is
a matter of liberty not price. To understand the concept you should
think of free as in free speech not as in free beer. In the late s other
groups published their own definitions which describe an almost
identical set of software. The most notable are Debian Free Software
Guidelines published inand the Open Source Definition published in The free
BSDbased operating systems such as FreeBSD OpenBSD and NetBSD do not have
their own formal definitions of free software but users of these systems
generally find the same set of software to be acceptable. However
rather than advocate the use of copyleft free software licences they see
copyleft as being merely tolerable. Instead they advocate permissive free
software licences which allow others to make software based on their
source code and then not in turn also distribute the source. Their view
is that this permissive approach is more free. The Kerberos X.org and
Apache software licences are substantially similar in intent and
implementation. All of these software packages originated in academic
institutions interested in the widest possible technology transfer University
of California MIT and UIUC.
Business Process Management Solutions All free software licences must grant people all the freedoms discussed
above. However unless the applications licences are compatible
combining programs by mixing source code or directly linking binaries is
problematic because of licence technicalities. Programs indirectly connected
together may avoid this problem.
Most free software uses a small set of licenses. The most popular of
these are the GNU General Public License
the GNU Lesser General Public License the BSD Licensethe Mozilla
Public Licensethe MIT License
the Apache LicenseFree Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative
both publish lists of licenses that they find to comply with their
definition of free software and opensource software respectively.List of
FSF approved software licencesList of OSI approved software licences
These lists are necessarily incomplete because a license need not be known
by either organization in order to provide these freedoms.Apart from
these two organisations the Debian project is seen by some to provide
useful advice on whether particular licenses comply with their Debian Free
Software Guidelines. Debian doesnt publish a list of approved licenses
so its judgements have to be tracked by checking what software they
have allowed into their software archives. That is summarized at the
Debian web siteHowever it is rare that a license is announced as being
incompliance by FSF or OSI and not the other the Netscape Public License
used for early versions of Mozilla being an exception so exact
definitions of the terms have not become hot issues.
BSDstyle licenses Most businesses must accomplish Most businesses must accomplish similar functions regardless of size legal structure or industry. These functions are often organized into
departments. Common departments include but are not limited to Accounting Typically responsible for financial reporting financial controls and
the raising of the capital necessary to run the business.Human Resources Typically responsible for hiring firing payroll benefits etc.Marketing
and salesresponsible for selling the business goods or services to the customer and for managing the relationships with the customer Marketing
Typically responsible for promoting interest in and generating demand for the business products or services and positioning them within the
market Sales finding likely purchasers and obtaining their agreement known as a contract to buy the business products or servicesv Research and Development Research and Development
tests to create new products and to determine their viability e.g.
pilot plants Information Technologymanages the business computer and data
assets CommunicationsPublic Relations responsible for communicating to
the outside world Administration provides administrative support to the
other departments such as typing filing etc.Internal Auditan
independent control function typically accountable to the Board of Directors for
reporting on the proper functioning of the other departments Management
is sometimes listed as a department but typically refers to the top
level of leadership within the business regardless of their functional
role.Management Please help improve this article by expanding this
section.See talk page for details. Please remove this message once the
section has been expanded.The study of the efficient and effective operation
of a business is called management. The main branches of management are
financial management marketing management human resource management
strategic management production management service management information
technology management and business intelligence. Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) Most legal jurisdictions specify the forms of ownership that a business
can take creating a body of commercial law for each type. Organizing a
vehicle
The major factors affecting how a business is organized are usually The
size and scope of the business and its anticipated management and
ownership. Generally a smaller business is more flexible while larger
businesses or those with wider ownership or more formal structures will
usually tend to be organized as partnerships or more commonly corporations.
In addition a business which wishes to raise money on a stock market
or to be owned by a wide range of people will often be required to adopt
a specific legal form to do so.The sector and country. Private profit
making businesses are different from government owned bodies. In some
countries certain businesses are legally obliged to be organized certain
ways. Limited liability. Corporations limited liability partnerships
and other specific types of business organizations protect their owners
from business failure by doing business under a separate legal entity
with certain legal protections. In contrast unincorporated businesses or
persons working on their own are usually not so protected.
Tax advantages. Different structures are treated differently in tax
law and may have advantages for this reason. Disclosure and compliance
requirements. Different business structures may be required to make more
or less information public or reported to relevant authorities and may
be bound to comply with different rules and regulations.
Copyleft licenses the GNU General Public License being the most
prominent. The author retains copyright and permits redistribution and
modification under terms to ensure that all modified versions remain free for
as long as the author wishes.BSDstyle licenses so called because they
are applied to much of the software distributed with the BSD operating
systems. The author retains copyright protection solely to disclaim
warranty and require proper attribution of modified works but permits
redistribution and modification in any work even proprietary ones again for
as long as the author wishes. Public domain softwarethe author has
abandoned the copyright. Since publicdomain software lacks copyright
protection it may be freely incorporated into any work whether proprietary
or free. Importantly software released thus goes completely out of
control of the author who even if he subsequently so desires cannot impose
any restriction on its use.