[4] http://www.fsf.org/
[5] http://www.debian.org/
[6] http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
You may wonder why would people spend hours of their own time writing software and carefully packaging it, only to give it all away. The answers are as varied as the people who contribute.
Many believe in sharing information and having the freedom to cooperate with one another, and they feel that free software encourages this. A long tradition that upholds these values, sometimes called the Hacker[[7]] Ethic, started in the 1950s. The Debian GNU/Linux Project was founded based on these Free Software ethics of freedom, sharing, and cooperation.
[7] Note that the term “hacker” should not be confused with the term “cracker.” In short, a hacker is benevolent, whereas a cracker is generally considered malevolent. Movies and other forms of media many times incorrectly use the term “hacker” instead of “cracker.”
Others want to learn more about computers. More and more people are looking for ways to avoid the inflated price of proprietary software. A growing community contributes in appreciation for all the great free software they’ve received from others.
Many in academia create free software to help get the results of their research into wider use. Businesses help maintain free software so they can have a say in how it develops—there’s no quicker way to get a new feature than to implement it yourself or hire a consultant to do so! Business is also interested in greater reliability and the ability to choose between support vendors.
Still others see free software as a social good, democratizing access to information and preventing excessive centralization of the world’s information infrastructure. Of course, a lot of us just find it great fun.
Debian is so committed to free software that we thought it would be useful if it was formalized in a document of some sort. Our Social Contract[[8]] promises that Debian will always be 100% free software. When you install a package from the Debian main distribution, you can be sure it meets our Free Software Guidelines.