I have answered a few questions. But I guess the questions need a little bit of reordering and rephrasing. I am posting this to the fsf-friends list so that the experts can correct me.

It would be better if this could be done on wiki.

Vijay

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Intro / Concept: What is free software?

Free software is software that gives the user the following four freedoms Freedom 0: Freedom to run the program. Freedom 1: Freedom to help yourself, by studying and modifying the program to your needs. Freedom 2: Freedom to help your neighbour, by distributing copies of the program. Freedom 3: Freedom to help build your community, by publishing a modified version of the program.

Well tell me what's not "free" about other kinds of software?

So "free" means that I don't have to spend any money then?

With free software, it might not be possible to "sell" the software itself. But when you get free software, you might be paying for the distribution media. Or you might be paying for support bundled along with the software. Or you might be paying for printed manuals that come along with the software. So in some cases you might get the software for zero dollars, in some cases you might be paying a small amount, and in yet some cases you might be paying a lot!

Whether the software is gratis or not is an unimportant side issue, what is important is whether you have the above said freedoms. Proprietary software could also be obtained gratis. For example Microsoft is giving schools gratis copies of Windows, that does not make Windows ethically legitimate.

How is Free Software actually made?

You mean, how do people raise funds to develop free software?

Many people who write free software are volunteers, they probably have an unrelated day time job. These people spend their free time developing free software.

Commercial organisations that benefit from free software distribution or that provide free software support also develop free software by investing portions of their profit. Example of such organsiations are Redhat and Mandrake.

There are many non-profit organisations that raise funds to develop free software, through donations from free software users. The Free Software Foundation is one such organisation. Other examples are SPI, Gnome Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and the like.

Some free software packages are developed by universities. The Festival text to speech engine, Octave - the Matlab clone are examples of software developed by universities.

Many commercial organisations also contribute to the development of free software, because these organisations benefit from the existing free software code base. For example IBM maintains the port of the Linux kernel to the PowerPC, because it needs a OS for its processor.

So how is this different from the production of other kinds of software?

Well, freedom three has enabled a new development methodology, in which a lot of people can collabrate through the internet and can help make the software better. This has resulted in free software being superior in quality to other non-free software.

So the term Free Software is a legal definition then?

What do you mean by "Copyleft" ? What's wrong with copyright? How is this different?

One way to make your software free would be put the program in the public domain. That way there would be no restrictions on the program and the users of the software would have the above four freedoms. But there is a problem with this approach. It enables uncooperative people to take free software make modifications in it and release it as non-free software. The new features might tempt some of the users to give up their freedom. And the free software developers would be forced to compete with improved versions of their own software!

This is not mere speculation, this has happened with the X Window system and the BSD operating system, where less restrictive free software licenses were used. Copyleft is a way of using the copyright provisions to prevent people from parasitically using free software code in non-free programs. Copyleft ensures that the freedoms are passed along in every version of a free software program. The GNU General Public License is a realisation of the copyleft.

What's wrong with copyright is a very different issue. You might want to read Stallman's essay on "Misinterpreting Copyright - A series of errors". But remember most of the free software programs are copyrighted.

Is this Copyleft against the law?

No.

What does GNU GPL stand for?

The GNU General Public License.

If this software is free as you say then why do we need legislation to protect it?

What is this supposed to mean...

What other licenses exist to protect Free Software?

There are many license that make a software free. But only some of them preserve the freedom aka copyleft. The non-copyleft license include MIT, BSD, ... The copyleft licenses include the GPL, LGPL, ...