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Free Software Foundation Turns 25
An anonymous reader writes "On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution."
GPL is cool but I think emacs was his greatest accomplishment. At least technical accomplishment.
Thank you.
.: Max Romantschuk
I'd have voted for GCC instead, but whatever.
I hate this article because I completely agree with it. I hate you.
Eric
Which came first, the Foundation or the Beard?
Trolling is a art,
...license or legal construction In the history of computing. Easily. It's not even close.
The Open Source movement owes its existence to it. Many a intellectual property lawsuit has been decided by it.
Citation, please? I think he worked there and was probably their most famous programmer. But besides that I don't think he held an executive position at that lab.
His most important contribution is GNU Hurd - it's the gift that keeps on giving.
#DeleteChrome
Looking at the bearded one, holiness to his name, I feel like I need a bath.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I have a hard time believing that anything RMS is even partially responsible for is anywhere near as important as GCC, from its humble beginnings as a replacement for CC on UNIX to its present juggernaut Compiler Collection.
Thanks Richard for leaving your fingerprints on all of my object files! GCC is the awesome.
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Richard,
Happy bir- COPYRIGHT VIOLATION DETECTED - TRANSMISSION TERMINATED
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Congratulations, GNU!
GNU/FSF?
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
He was a system administrator, not the director of the lab! Minsky, Papert, et al didn't report to him...
Ken
Now get rid of Stallman and I will actively support you.
Gone!
Nope. The GNU tools were already being used to augment commercial Unixen and as a foundation for bootstrapping the development environments of alternate hardware platforms like video game consoles. Free Software was already making it's mark before Linux came along. Many of us were exposed to the GNU tools first and then to Linux later.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The next time you consume some of Hollywood's "product", you will likely be taking advantage of his legacy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Bethany: What is Stallman like?
Rufus: He likes to listen to people talk. I remember the old days when we were sittin' around the computer lab. You know, whenever we were goin' on about unimportant shit, He'd always have a smile on his face. His only real beef with programmers is the shit that gets carried out His name. Wars. Bigotry. Mobile Operating Systems. The big one though, is the factioning of the distros. He said, "Linux got it all wrong by takin' a good idea and building a belief structure out of it."
Bethany: So you're saying that having beliefs is a bad thing?
Rufus: I just think it's better to have an idea. You can change an idea; changing a belief is trickier. People die for it, people kill for it. The whole of Free software is in jeopardy right now because of the Open Source belief system in this software as a service bullshit. RedHat and SuSE, whether they know it or not, are exploiting that belief, and if they're successful, you, me, all of this ends in a heartbeat. All over a belief.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
If it were not for free software the PhotoShop would cost not 999 USD, 9999 USD, IIS would cost about 100 grands, etc.
We would have to perform computing with permission of high priests by a code resembling liturgies.
Debatably the free software is not as sophisticated as commercial software, but it is straightforward.
There is a historical parallel. In 30s the FBI was relatively small in numbers, and not that well trained. They've made a lot of errors, but still they could win over gangsters because they did not take bribes; they were honest and straightforward.
and while you're at it, write in Mr. Nader for VP.
Wouldn't that be some great governance!
http://www.votenader.org/
I am running Gnu-Linux on an NSLU2, a DNS-323, and a SheevaPlug. I have a free compiler on these devices.
On another computer, I just downloaded MingW and Lighttpd (source and binary) last night.
I remember when "free software" usually meant crippleware, and there was no way a poor kid eager to write code could get a compiler for free.
Thanks for your vision, RMS. You changed culture and you helped the future.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
.. for your vision, contributions, and (and I know I'm not alone in this one).. helping me establish a career.
I make a living building and maintaining *nix hosts, and it probably wouldn't have happened if I didn't spend my childhood and teenage years playing with free software like Slackware, Debian, gcc, screen, bash, and a million other packages. Of course, a complete thank you list would be long enough to overflow my copy/paste buffer, but as this article is about GNU:
Thank you RMS! You've inspired millions of us, and pushed humanity forward yet another step.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
GCC is what it is because of the license. Without the license, it would just be another compiler most likely closed or restricted in some way. That it isn't is because of the license, not because of the code.
To what do you attribute the Wright brothers plane? The internal combustion engine or the dream to fly? Without the engine there could have been a plane driven by say a rocket, but without the dream their would never have been a plane.
It can be very hard to truly comprehend just how big Stallman's contribution has been. Freedom is very hard to grasp, if you are used to it.
In another response to the story about net neutrality I linked the internet to the press and the contribution to freedom that this tech has made. But what is that contribution? The art of reproducing text quickly OR the power of the written word? The capability of human beings to pass on their thoughts to others without ever meeting them?
Just as the chattering monkey became more human by being able to write down speech, and then more free by being able reproduce it easily and even free'er(?) by being able to transmit what he had for breakfast around the globe (oh okay so it ain't all good), the GNU, FSF etc have given us a degree of freedom that once we couldn't imagine and now can't imagine being without.
The oldies MIGHT remember machines on which you paid for every single second of access. In which hardware was not owned but leased. Only the very powerful could own a computer and making it doing anything useful cost even more.
Today, I can own a computer far more powerful, own it completly and use countless pieces of software for free. Not saying I have to, but I can and the fact that I can already means that those who wish to control software/hardware and freedom are restricted in doing so. Good luck MS with their ActiveX and attempts to stop the internet. IE did NOT manage to make the web an MS experience. Can you imagine what MS would have been like if they had IBM mainframe style control of the IBM compatible? If there never had been a Compaq, never had been a Dr-DOS? It would have been the Apple from Hell.
Trying to explain this alternate reality would be like trying to explain the holocaust (godwin can kiss my hairy butt) in a universe were said holocaust never happened. We escape the complete control of our PC's by IBM, so how can we imagine what the world would have been like with IBM in control?
And of course Stallman didn't do it all alone. But he has been the most central figure who has stood firm for 25 years. He and everyone else who has helped create the idea of software not as an owned and controlled resource has made the world we live in today. How could countless websites have gotten started without free Apache, free Perl/PHP/Python/etc, free databases yes even free OS'es?
But isn't MS software as easily available? Yes, BUT and this is a HUGE BUT, without IBM loosing control over the PC, MS would also never have been. MS, the closed source control freak company owes it existence to "free" software/hardware. Proof? No MS on mainframes.
So yes. GCC is awesome, but it is a minor tool, the AK47 of the freedom movement. It is the fight, not the weapons that matter. The decleration of independe vs the guarilla tactics. The refusal to obey seperation laws rather then choosing a seat in a bus.
And to those who think free software is not comparable. It isn't. But lack of freedom in small areas can mean the lack of freedom is far larger areas. Wouldn't it be convenient for those who want to control freedom, if printing presses could only be bought with identification? If a website could only be setup with a real ID?
So thank you Richard Stallman. I would never have the courage to do what you did, but the world is a better place cause you did it. Not perfect, but better. Just that the rest of us must remember that if we take it all for granted, we might loose it all. DMCA, Trusted Computing etc are real treaths and they do NOT go away just because we managed to stop them once.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
GCC would not have mattered one lick without the license.
Really, it's just a C compiler. It's important, but rudimentary. Anybody with sufficient programming skills can write one for a given machine (and they do). The license was the stroke of genius. GCC only exists in its current form because of the license. Without it GCC would be just another compiler in the dustbin of history.
The real important contribution was the counter-culture he started, and that was only able to survive the extremely proprietary world of computers because of the license.
I don't even like Stallman (I think he's an asshole, frankly), but that's clearly one thing he got very right. It was a brilliant move to use the same copyright laws that were used to steal his (and his compatriates') software in order to ensure their software would be free to use by everyone forever.
In other words, open source software - GCC included - would likely not exist today without the GPL.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Of course not. He uses the shower, like all grown-ups do.
Now go back in your bath with your yellow rubber ducky.
hippie
He would have released his software as public domain. I guess he can't just step up to the challenge.
Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation.
What a terrible mis-representation of RMS's motivations. The EFF wasn't founded because RMS thought his software being "stolen" - it was created because he was locked out of fixing bugs in software on equipment in the lab where he worked. Read the first chapter of Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. -- For Want of a Printer for a description of that seminal moment.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The BSDs would exist without the GPL. Of course, getting to use GCC helps. Of all the things that RMS is responsible for, GCC is the only one I really use in any meaningful way. I think the majority of GPL software that I use isn't actually GNU or sponsored by the FSF, it just happens to be GPL. But the majority of my platform isn't GPL:
- FreeBSD is BSD licensed
- Apache is Apache (basically BSD) licensed
- PostreSQL uses a modified BSD-style license
- Perl is dual licensed with either the Artistic License or the GPL, depending on which you want to accept
- BIND is BSD licensed
I'm not particularly reliant on any GPL-based software other than GCC. That is the crux of my argument. Don't confuse "open source" with "free software" with the GPL.
Communism died between 1989 when the Berlin wall fell and 1991 when the USSR was dismantled. The FSF should have followed closely. Shame really. Especially when you see how many good projects managed with out it (notably BSD and Apache).
Have they given up on the HURD?
I'm not being a smartass, I'd actually like to know. Did Stallman give up and give in to "GNU/Linux" or will we ever see an actual HURD?
Yeah but without it, I think GNU would have struggled in the 90s. Unix was dying, Linux injected some life.
I like his political notes and news articles feed. Excellent choice of articles.
It is difficult to know what would happen without the GPL but what the parent says does have some merit: the counter culture was very important and it is possible that all those projects are so successful because of this "counter culture". In this sense the Free Software foundation and GPL are Stallman's greatest contribution.
Would all of those licenses have arisen if the FSF didn't prove it was a feasible strategy with the success of the GPL?
Uhmm, the BSDs are much older than Linux and they also use GCC and other GNU tools. BSD1 was released in 1977, which is before Linus was born! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_history-simple.svg
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yes. The BSD license was a consequence of being the product of a public university, receiving federal funds to work on projects. Even without the GPL, I suspect it is highly likely that the BSD license would have been created as-is anyway.
He may or may not be an asshole, but it is his attitude what made this possible. Without the attitude nothing would have happend.
New things are always on the horizon
i dont know you well, actually i dont know you at all. but, thank you, really.
Read radical news here
Actually I'd argue that it isn't the license so much as the man himself. Love him or hate him (I too think he's gone a little too far overboard and gets worse as he ages) his license would be worth exactly jack squat if it weren't for the man's ability to promote himself and the GPL. after all what good would have been the GPL if only he had used it?
A good example IMHO is the way he'll choose some boring normal proprietary software press conference, which nearly any reporter assigned to is figuring is gonna be as boring and dull as watching paint dry, and at just the right moment holds up one of his little hippy signs with a catchy slogan. If you think about it it is fucking brilliant, as every reporter is gonna lock onto him like a heat seeking missile because he is the only possible controversy in an otherwise boring as hell press release, thus ensuring he and his message gets front row coverage. That is a seriously brilliant piece of promotion right there, which costs him exactly nothing but really gets his point across.
So I'd say the whole argument of Emacs VS GPL VS GCC would be moot if the man hadn't gotten the word out, and with a non profit copyleft style organization promotion has to be not only damned cheap but damned effective too, and love him or hate him RMS is damned smart when it comes for getting himself and the GPL promoted. And I'd say one could safely argue it was that gift that allowed him to create a FOSS empire from nothing but an idea. So here is to you Stallman, we may not agree on hardly anything, but I give credit where credit is due and you've earned yours. Happy Bday FSF.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't even like Stallman (I think he's an asshole, frankly), but that's clearly one thing he got very right. ... open source software - GCC included - would likely not exist today without the GPL.
If you start such a movement and doing so frustrate self-interested grabbers of all kinds, you are naturally going to be the target of abuse and personal attacks on such a scale that you may have, or you may need to already have, a thick skin to merely survive.
But your post does underline the significance of the accomplishment, so I concur.
Long live Richard Stallman !!! He was very inspiration for various other great intellectuals like Linus Torvalds.
An early version of the BSD license was already in use before the GPLv1 was released. Granted, since then, there have been many modifications of it, including what's often referred to as the "Modified BSD License" that removes the advertising requirement.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
When I was in early high school, I attended a workshop for bright kids where each of us wrote a compiler. During a week. Not knowing anything about writing compilers beforehand, just being teached the basics of yacc and stuff on the go. Of course, these compilers had hardly any optimization, but they produced working code.
Stallman didn't have yacc, but he was an experienced programmer with full access to relevant books -- all the theory relevant was already widely known by then. And coding a LALR parser is hardly more complex than, say, coding AVL trees.
Writing a good optimizing compiler is a task for a team of great coders for years, but one that just works is a simple deal.
Thus, GCC is just a yet another tool in the GNU collection, not something revolutionary like the GPL.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
GNU easily pre-dates Linux, but Linus' contribution was still very significant, if nothing else in that it provided a second "Unix" kernel.
Cross-pollination between BSD based kernels and Linux continue to the present. Both BSD and Linux are better kernels as a result.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
He didn't start the counterculture though. He just formalized it by sahing "all you hippies have to do it my way". We had tons of free aka open source software before FSF, it just didn't have that socialist license on it.
The difference is that most people weren't so uptight if some company took the open code and incorporated it.
I think GNU was a bigger step than FSF, and less nutty. It was the "why are we relying on commercial unix when we could just make our own" moment. They did a lot of good work on the tools and infrastructure for a unix system. They could have gotten the kernel before Linux but I think they aimed a bit too high by trying to design the perfect kernel with all the latest ideas in it, and it never really got to the implementation phase. When Linux came out a lot of people panned it for being too old-school, monolithic macrokernel, but it it was the last piece of the goal GNU was after.
Open source is a term that rms rejects. It omits the most important part, freedom. Please call it Free Software.
linus was born 1969 linux was born 1991
for you.
clang is BSD-compatible and better (for various definitions of "better") than gcc. The c++ support isn't production quality yet (their words) but I haven't had any problems with it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Thanks to RMS for all his (often colourful) advocacy. But has it done him any good - has he managed to get access to the driver for his labs Xerox 9700 yet?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
RMS tried to convince the folks at Berkeley to use a license like the GPL for all their newly re-written networking code (U.C. Berkeley was in the middle of re-writing all the bits of UNIX that ATT had a copyright on). Berkeley ultimately decided on releasing under looser terms. They were not on even this track until the discussions with RMS. So, BSD folks, you have RMS to thank.
MIT license, I don't know about that one, but since RMS is at MIT probably had some influence.
The other licenses came after, so it would be hard to argue that they were not influenced.
So, yes, regardless of the license, you still have RMS to thank.
The anonymous contributor needs to get a better grip on reality.
The software in question was mostly written by programmers who were MIT staff members and students. MIT held the copyright on the software that they developed. MIT subsequently licensed the software to at least three companies: Symbolics, LMI and Texas Instruments. (I don't recall if there were any others.)
The founders of Symbolics and LMI included many of the same people who had worked on the software as MIT staff. Stallman remained an MIT employee.
Nothing in this story makes Symbolics or LMI or Texas Instruments a "disreputable software company". MIT has a long history of licensing technology developed within its walls to industry, often to startups formed by ex-MIT employees. This was no different. (At least, at the time this was no different. I have no idea what MIT's current practice is for software developed by its employees.)
Stallman's unhappiness with the fate of the software he had worked on motivated him to invent the GPL. This was indeed a wonderful idea that has done an enormous amount of good for the world. He deserves a great deal of credit for this.
But there is no need to over dramatize the birth of the GPL by painting the companies who licensed the Lisp Machine software as some kind of evil villains. They weren't doing anything different from what many other computer companies of the day were doing.
And (as many others have noted) Stallman was never the director of the MIT AI Lab.
Honestly, what Linux injected was the development strategy. The whole Cathedral and Bazaar thing. Before Linux, it was considered a good idea to limit the number of people working on a project. I, myself, volunteered to work on the Hurd long before I had heard of Linux. I had done a project in an OS course on Mach and wanted to play with it some more, so I wrote to the development team and they rejected me without even seeing what I could do. Many of the development source repositories for various things were private at that time and you could only get the source for released code (well, the fact that the internet wasn't widely available didn't help things).
What Linux provided was the first really low barrier to entry project. You wanted to work on it, you checked out the code, modified it and sent in a patch. At the time, there were not really any big projects that worked that way. Linux injected life by making it exciting to contribute. After the huge success story of Linux, virtually every successful project moved towards doing things the same way. Most of what we see as common sense now with open source programming started with Linux. That's why it totally dominated free software kernel development (and still does, I suppose).
GNU relied on brilliant individual accomplishments, and in fact did struggle in the 90s. Well, that's to say that it continued as normal, but was overshadowed by spectacular growth of other projects, even if they were smaller in scope. And this is why we talk about Linux distributions rather than GNU distributions.
I just emailed to rms saying "Happy birthday to FSF :) Thanks for creating it Richard." and he responded with:
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 11:55, Richard Stallman wrote:
What we achieve is due to the support we receive from the community.