Free Software turns 25

The Inquirer | Sep 3, 2008 2:40 PM
It's party time
GNU SOFTWARE is turning 25 years old this year, so the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is celebrating with a month-long party launched by the release of "Happy Birthday to GNU," a short video with English humourist, actor, novelist, film maker and posh bloke Stephen Fry.

In the five-minute short, Fry likens free software to "good science" and contrasts it with the proprietary software it replaces, which he characterises as a "kind of tyranny" that's imposed by companies like Microsoft and Apple. He encourages people to use genuinely free software like the GNU/Linux distribution Gnewsense and free software generally, for freedom's sake.

FSF volunteer and the short film's writer-producer Matt Lee said, "Stephen has generously donated his time to the cause of free software. His ability to communicate a technological and philosophical movement in terms of the basic principles of sharing and user freedom -- ideas that everyone can understand -- will introduce a new and broader audience to the benefits of free software."

Peter Brown, the FSF's executive director, added, "Despite all of the success brought about by the GNU system and other free software projects, we still need a determined effort to replace or eliminate the proprietary applications, platforms, drivers and firmware that many users still run. In this light, the video of Stephen Fry is not just a celebration, but a rallying call for the work that still needs to be done. During September we plan a number of further announcements leading up to Software Freedom Day on September 20 and the GNU anniversary on September 27."

For all those not familiar with it, "GNU" is a recursive acronym standing for "GNU's Not Unix." Recursive acronymns are harmless puns prevalent among LISP programmers like Richard Stallman, who is the founder of GNU software and philosopher-sage of the Free Software Foundation.

Stallman began development of free-as-in-freedom Unix-like GNU software in September, 1983. In 1992, all the essential pieces of the GNU system were complete, except for one, the operating system kernel.

When Linux was re-released under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) that year, the combination of the GNU software development toolchain, compiler GCC, and utilities with the Linux kernel formed a complete free operating system, which made it possible for the first time to run a PC without non-free software such as a proprietary Unix or Windows.

This OS combination is what Richard Stallman and the FSF prefer to term the GNU/Linux system. Almost everyone else calls the system simply Linux, which pains Stallman because the kernel Linux is built upon the software base that he provided in the GNU environment.

The 25th anniversary video featuring Stephen Fry is available for download here.