1. Introduction to free software, the GNU project

Logiciel libre is the French translation of free software. In this case, free does not mean free, but libre. The notion of free software derives directly from the concept expressed in English by the term open source (see http://www.opensource.org ), so the main characteristic of free software is the availability of the source code, not the free license.

There's another type of software called freeware, but it has nothing to do with free software: in this case, the term free indicates that the software is free, while the source code is rarely available.