නිදහස් අන්තර්ගතය

Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content having no significant legal restriction relative to people's freedom to use, distribute copies, modify, and to distribute derived works of the content. It is distinct from open content in that it can be modified, whereas one might not have that ability with content that is simply "open" and not "free".

Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the freedoms mentioned above. Because copyright law in most countries by default grants copyright holders monopolistic control over their creations, copyrighted content must be explicitly declared free, usually by the referencing or inclusion of licensing statements from within the work.

Though a work which is in the public domain because its copyright has expired is considered free, it can become non-free again if the copyright law changes.

නීත්යානුකූලභාවය
Traditional copyright

Traditionally, copyright is a legal concept, which grants the author or creator of a work legal rights to control the duplication and public performance of his or her work. In many jurisdictions, this is limited by a time period after which the works then enter the public domain. During the time period of copyright the author's work may only be copied, modified, or publicly performed with the consent of the author, unless the use is a fair use.

Traditional copyright control, when compared to free content, is limiting in several ways.  It limits the use of the work of the author to those who can, or are willing to, afford the payment of royalties to the author for usage of the authors content, or limit their use to fair use. Secondly it limits the use of content whose author cannot be found. Finally it creates a perceived barrier between authors by limiting derivative works, such as mashups and collaborative content. Copyleft is based on the belief that  the temporary publishing monopoly that traditional copyright created in order to encourage science and learning is not actually the best way to promote science and learning.

පොදු වසම

The public domain is a range of creative works whose copyright has expired, or was never established; as well as ideas and factsThe copyright status of uncreative aggregates of basic data may differ by region, for the USA see Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, for Australia, see Telstra v Desktop Marketing Systems which are ineligible for copyright. A public domain work is a work whose author has either relinquished to the public, or no longer can claim control over, the distribution and usage of the work. As such any person may manipulate, distribute, or otherwise utilize the work, without legal ramifications. A work released into the public domain, or under a very liberal license, by its author may be referred to as "copycenter".

Copyleft

Copyleft is a play on the word copyright and describes the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work.  The aim of copyleft is to use the legal framework of copyright to enable non-author parties to be able to reuse and, in many licensing schemes, modify content that is created by an author. Unlike public domain or other non-copyleft free work, the author still maintains copyright over the material, however the author has granted a non-exclusive license to any person to distribute, and often modify, the work. Copyleft licenses require that any derivative works be distributed under the same terms, and that the original copyright notices be maintained.

A symbol commonly associated with copyleft is a reversal of the copyright symbol, facing the other way; the opening of the C points left rather than right. Unlike the copyright symbol, the copyleft symbol does not have a codified meaning.

Usage
Projects that provide free content exist in several areas of interest, such as software, academic literature, general literature, music, images, video, and engineering.

තාක්‍ෂණය ප්‍රකාශනයේ පිරිවැය අඩු කර ඇති අතර පුද්ගලයන් හෝ කුඩා කණ්ඩායම් විසින් පුළුල් ලෙස බෙදා හරින ලද ද්‍රව්‍ය නිෂ්පාදනය කිරීමට ප්‍රමාණවත් තරම් ප්‍රවේශ බාධකය අඩු කර ඇත. පරිගණක තාක්ෂණයේ දියුණුව හා සම්බන්ධ ද්‍රව්‍ය බෙදා හැරීමේ පහසුව හේතුවෙන් නොමිලේ සාහිත්‍ය සහ බහුමාධ්‍ය අන්තර්ගතයන් සැපයීමේ ව්‍යාපෘති වඩ වඩාත් ප්‍රමුඛ වී ඇත. මෙම තාක්‍ෂණික වර්ධනයන්ට පෙර එවැනි ව්‍යාප්තිය ඉතා මිල අධික විය හැකිය.

මාධ්ය
In media, which includes textual, audio, and visual content, free licensing schemes such as some of the licenses made by Creative Commons have allowed for the dissemination of works under a clear set of legal permissions. Not all of the Creative Commons’ licenses are entirely free: their permissions may range from very liberal general redistribution and modification of the work to a more restrictive redistribution-only licensing. Since February 2008, Creative Commons licenses which are entirely free carry a badge indicating that they are "approved for free cultural works". Repositories exist which exclusively feature free material provide content such as photographs, clip art, music, and literature,.

මෘදුකාංග

Free software, often referred to as open source software, is a maturing technology with major companies utilising free software to provide both services and technology to both end users and technical consumers. The ease of dissemination has allowed for increased modularity, which allows for smaller groups to contribute to projects as well as simplifying collaboration.

Open source development models have been classified as having a similar peer-recognition and collaborative benefit incentives that are typified by more classical fields such as scientific research, with the social structures that result from this incentive model decreasing production cost.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/staff/herkia/kava/Seminnarit/MI_mustonen.pdf |title=Copyleft – the economics of Linux and other open source software |accessdate=March 22, 2009 |version=Discussion Paper No. 493 |last=Mustonen |first=Mikko |publisher=Department of Economics, University of Helsinki |format