Abstract

controls about 95 % of the desktop computer market, this was clearly a major step forward in the provision of technology to Irish speakers in a native language context. At the same time, tucked away among the recalcitrant 5 % of non-Windows users, there is a small community of volunteer translators and software developers that has been enjoying a completely free Irish language desktop system since 2002. This system is based on Linux, a free alternative to the Windows operating system, and includes a complete range of end-user applications such as web browsers, email handlers, office software, and games. Here “free ” has a technical definition 1 which means roughly that the software in question can be copied, modified, redistributed, or even sold by anyone, as long as the redistributed versions preserve these same freedoms for others. While there is no requirement that the software be distributed at no cost, in practice it almost always is 2. One occasionally hears reference to “open source ” software, which, for the purposes of this paper, amounts to the same thing, despite endless hair-splitting in the free software community. 1 See

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