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Stephen Fry Helps GNU Celebrate 25th Birthday

Posted by timothy on from the even-at-double-the-price dept.

Virgil Tibbs writes "The GNU operating system is turning 25 this year, and the Free Software Foundation has kicked off its month-long celebration of the anniversary by releasing 'Happy Birthday to GNU,' a short film featuring the English humorist, actor, novelist and filmmaker Stephen Fry. In the five-minute film, Fry compares the free software operating system to 'good science' and contrasts it with the 'kind of tyranny' imposed by the proprietary software produced by companies like Microsoft and Apple that it replaces. He encourages people to use free GNU/Linux distributions like gNewSense and free software generally, for freedom's sake."

6 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow... by MythMoth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... and there was me thinking Stephen Fry was your regular computer luddite.

    On the contrary, he's famously geeky. He's proud of the fact that he was the second person in the UK to get a Mac. Given that the first was Douglas Adams that's quite a feat!

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    --- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
  2. Look at who his father is, then understand by Kupfernigk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Alan Fry, physicist and erstwhile manufacturer of control systems. Personally, I suspect all the technical stuff is actually written by Fry Senior...all right, that's unlikely to be true, but in this case the apple has fallen a lot closer to the tree than most people here seem to realise. Esther Dyson doesn't surprise us, why should Stephen Fry?

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    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
    1. Re:Look at who his father is, then understand by bob.appleyard · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That probably had something to do with it. He's also had some techie friends.

      The only reason one would be surprised is if one didn't know anything about him but the occasional comedy show on telly. He has written loads of columns on techie stuff. Here's a sample of the stuff he's writing currently. Seriously, this guy is one of us.

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      How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
  3. The uber-geek by Armakuni · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Fry is rapidly building his geek-cred. He was great friends with Douglas Adams and the Monty Pythons, and now he promotes GNU. And wasn't he a character in some animated geek series?

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    That's not Picasso, that's Kandinsky!
  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. Re:But it's not Gnu/BSD by JasterBobaMereel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...and GNU is useless without a kernel, the GNU/HURD has taken 25 years (and counting) to build ...

    Most people use X.Org and Gnome/KDE and their code is much larger ... but they do not get a mention

    Linux/GNU/X.Org/Gnome would be a fairer (but sillier) name ....

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    Puteulanus fenestra mortis