OStatic

GNU Kicks Off 25th Anniversary Celebration

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the GNU Project by Richard M. Stallman. GNU is one of the oldest and best-known organizations in the free and open-source world, providing not only high-quality software, but also a well-known license (the GNU General Public License), and a philosophy that continues to influence many activists and programmers. The exact anniversary of Stallman's announcement is September 27th, 1983, when he called upon programmers to join him in creating "free Unix."

This use of the word "free" has led many to think that Stallman advocates software which is free of charge, or "free as in beer," as a commonly used description says. But Stallman was referring to "free as in freedom," using the word to describe not to the price, but everyone's ability to use, modify, and distribute programs.

Stallman established the Free Software Foundation to further this goal, and successfully released an editor (GNU Emacs), a C/C++ compiler (gcc), and numerous utilities that were generally considered to be superior to their native Unix counterparts, with more options and fewer restrictions. An operating system kernel proved elusive for some time, until Linus Torvalds combined his fledgling "Linux" kernel with the GNU suite of utilities, creating a combination that has become extremely popular. Stallman and others argue that Linux is merely a kernel, and that a true operating system would not exist without the tools -- and thus refer to the complete operating system as "GNU/Linux.," This term has been largely ignored by the masses, regardless of its accuracy. Another kernel, known as the GNU Hurd, has been under development for many years.

As part of its 25th-anniversary celebration, the Free Software Foundation has produced a video of British celebrity Stephen Fry, describing why he uses free software, and advocating for its more widespread use. Those familiar with the FSF will not be surprised to hear him speak of "free software," but not "open-source" software. The latter term is one which Stallman and the FSF have explicitly rejected, saying that it puts too much of an emphasis on the practical aspects of software development, rather than the philosophical and social aspects.

The FSF is generally well known for its strong principles, which some see as naive and obstinate. The FSF's list of "endorsed" Linux (or GNU/Linux, in their parlance) distributions does not include any of the best-known names, because they include or endorse non-free software. Even Debian and Ubuntu, which have separate repositories for non-free software, do not seem to make the cut.

Today, open-source software has become popular among governments and corporations, and in which there at least a dozen foundations promoting open-source software. It is amazing to think that only 25 years ago, the notion that you could get high-quality software for free, and that people would work together without pay to create sophisticated programs, was seen as a pipe dream. As the thousands of projects on OStatic alone demonstrate, Stallman's plans have more than achieved their goals, instilling many with a strong feeling that software can and should be free to modify and distribute.

• gnu
• linux
• stallman
• emacs
• fsf
• gcc

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