Z:gnu-www-ja-free-software-even-more-important--3e7256-(1) The freedom to study the p/en

(1) The freedom to study the program's &ldquo;source code&rdquo;, and change it, so the program does your computing as you wish. Programs are written by programmers in a programming language&mdash;like English combined with algebra&mdash;and that form of the program is the &ldquo;source code&rdquo;. Anyone who knows programming, and has the program in source code form, can read the source code, understand its functioning, and change it too. When all you get is the executable form, a series of numbers that are efficient for the computer to run but extremely hard for a human being to understand, understanding and changing the program in that form are forbiddingly hard.