20th Anniversary of RMS's Original GNU Post

An anonymous reader writes "Sep 27, 2003 is the 20th anniversary of Stallman's original Usenet post describing his vision of GNU. Good time for reflecting over GNU's successes and failures, about how it has changed our world."

Comments

Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you RMS

Re:Thanks

[rgmoore]

That's not at all true. For a long time the FSF got most of its money by selling tapes of GNU code. They continue to sell copies of GNU software on their website, so RMS would be pretty hypocritical to criticize others for selling free software. (Hypocricy has never struck me as being one of RMS's failings; he's unusually true to his principles.) There's a page about selling free software on the FSF web site, and it should clear up confusion on this matter. The FSF positively encourages anyone who's distributing Free Software to charge as much for it as they think they can get away with. A particularly salient quote from that page (emphasis is theirs):

So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.

That sure doesn't sound like an objection to selling software to me!

Remarkably, he said...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Imagine in 20 years when this makes the front page of Slashdot on a Saturday morning at 1am. I bet no one will see it."

Dream come true.

[FocaJonathan]

It is a lesson to think big. We take GNU and Linux for granted today. 20 years ago the did not exist.

Think big and see what you can do with your life!

A suggestion for the next 20 years...

[Kjella]

...try focusing on it being the "GNU GPL" instead of "GNU/Linux" and how GNU created the system of licencing that brought us Linux, which as more of a consequence also involved creating the first GPL'd programs. I think that would be more effective instead of focusing so much on the specific GNU utilities in a distribution.

People know their distribution (Red Hat), and the kernel (Linux). The "middleware" GNU will never be famous. But the GPL is, though the people that talk about it is a lot higher than those that have read it. That is not ment to undermine what they have achieved, it's just that sometimes I feel they're barking up the wrong tree...

Kjella

Original Post and Current Status of GNU

[ccevans]

It is interesting to look at how the ideas in the post agree and disagree with the state of GNU today.

For example, Stallman states that a kernel is a top priority, yet we still don't have a really stable, working kernel out of GNU (I don't think Mach or Hurd count).

Also interesting - filename completion is mentioned as a possibility. Now it is difficult for many people, including myself, to live without it. Yet Stallman implies that a Lisp-based window system is more important. What became of this idea?

By far, my favorite quote from this is:

For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the independently-written parts would not work together.

Is this not what GNU started? Many projects with part-time distributed workers? This is a quote from RMS, stating that the development model most open source projects now use would be very difficult.

Re:weirdo

[coene]

No no no, every technically competant person in China has one job: keep their mail server operating as an open relay.

Who was "we"?

[Klync]

What an inspiration! I have a question, though, and maybe RMS or someone else on this site would be able to answer this. No, it's not about how the first thing he mentions is a kernel and the last thing to actually be done (if you can even say that) is the kernel.

It's about RMS switching between "I" and "we". What's up with that? Obviously this post is a shout-out to anyone interested in helping. But on that date, when RMS first shouted-out this revolutionary idea [chokes back tears, pauses to regain composure], who else was already involved? Who was this "we" he speaks of? Or was it a theoretical "we"? The Royal "we"?

While I'm writing, can I just say once more to Richard, Linus, Rusty, Alan, and all the other* millions who have contributed their code in the spirit of the GNU project: A MILLION THANK YOU'S!! You have already changed the world!

*If you're a big-kahuna-GNU/developer, please don't be offended that I left your name out. I love you too.

Re:Arpa?

[stefanlasiewski]

What's an "ARPA", and why wont Network Solutions let me register one!?!?!

I could register one for you, but then I'd have to kill you.

Re:Able to operate in a residential area?

[leighklotz]

He was talking about not wanting a Vax 780 or probably even a 750, which was what ARPA had declared to be the standard ARPA grant platform.

For years, the GNU project ran on a Vax 750 called "prep.ai.mit.edu", but it was at MIT on the 7th floor of Tech Square, not in RMS's house (which burned down, by the way). Quite a few times I crashed prep by using the vt100 on top of it and typing ^P in Unix EMACS (as opposed to ITS EMACS on the PDP-10). ^P takes you to the machine boot ROM on a Vax -- equivalent to taking you to the BIOS immediately on an Intel PC.

It was a while before I figured out how to recover and continue running Unix. So I probably lost the GNU project a few files due to fsck lossage...

Re:Back to the software.

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

I offered him a beer once - "Hey Richard, free beer?"
He said beer was vile. I don't know if he got the joke.
Then he made me give him a dollar for a GNU sticker.

His greatest contributions: GPL and GCC

[steveha]

Looking back, I'd say RMS's two greatest contributions to the world are the GNU Public License and the GCC compiler.

The GPL attracted a whole bunch of people who are willing to contribute code, but not if someone could rip the code off, change a few things, and sell it in a broken state. This is one of the reasons for the great vitality of Linux and of GNU software. Also, the GPL makes companies like IBM willing to donate patents (such as the Read-Copy-Update patent) for use in free software; thanks to the GPL they know they can still sell a patent license if anyone wants to use the patent for a proprietary purpose.

GCC, on the other hand, made it possible for people to write free software without paying thousands of dollars for a compiler. It also served as a common language across all the *NIX platforms; if you were writing a utility, you could write to GCC instead of needing to work around the quirks of the various C compilers.

Linus Torvalds got the ball rolling on the Linux kernel, but he used GCC and the GPL to do it.

Thank you, RMS.

steveha