from
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
FRS
n 1: the central bank of the United States; incorporates 12
Federal Reserve branch banks and all national banks and
state-chartered commercial banks and some trust companies;
"the Fed seeks to control the United States economy by
raising and lowering short-term interest rates and the
money supply" [syn: {Federal Reserve System}, {Federal
Reserve}, {Fed}, {FRS}]
from
Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)
FRS
//, n.,obs.
[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.