Notes on  FRS 

[obs.] Abbreviation for "Freely Redistributable Software" which
entered general use on the Internet in 1995 after years of low-level
confusion over what exactly to call software written to be passed
around and shared (contending terms including FREEWARE,
SHAREWARE, and sourceware were never universally felt to be
satisfactory for various subtle reasons). The first formal conference
on freely redistributable software was held in Cambridge,
Massachussetts, in February 1996 (sponsored by the Free Software
Foundation). The conference organizers used the FRS abbreviation
heavily in its calls for papers and other literature during 1995. The
term was in steady though not common use until 1998 and the invention
of OPEN SOURCE, after which it became swiftly obsolete.

J3N Research Labs

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