| Software | Piece of code able to be run on a computer | web browser, text editor, PDF reader |
| FLOSS | Free/libre and open-source software. Code anyone can inspect, change, share | Linux, Firefox, LibreOffice |
| Process | Procedure of running a program on a specific computer | |
| Protocol | Common language spoken by applications over a network | HTTP, email, ActivityPub, ATProto, Matrix |
| Federation | Independent servers speaking a shared protocol, forming one network | Mastodon, Matrix servers email providers |
| Fork | Your own modified copy of a piece of software | Brave is a fork of Chromium |
| Self-hosting | Running a service on hardware you (or your community) control | our Nextcloud and JupyterHub |