The GNU Manifesto Turns Thirty

An anonymous reader writes: It was March, 1985 when Richard M. Stallman published the GNU Manifesto in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Software Tools. Thirty years on, The New Yorker has an article commemorating its creation and looking at how it has shaped software in the meantime. "Though proprietary and open-source software publishers might appear at the moment to have the upper hand, Stallman's influence with developers (among whom he is known simply by his initials, 'rms') remains immense. When I asked around about him, many people spoke of him as one might of a beloved but eccentric and prickly uncle. They would roll their eyes a bit, then hasten to add, as more than one did, 'But he's right about most things.' I told Stallman that I'd spoken with several developers who venerate his work, and who had even said that without it the course of their lives might have been altered. But they don't seem to do what you say, I observed; they all have iPhones. 'I don't understand that either,' he said. 'If they don't realize that they need to defend their freedom, soon they won't have any.'"

Comments

Why So Important

[rtb61]

The core principle of any democracy is knowledge must be free. Democracy ceases to be such when knowledge is priced beyond the reach of majority and they are forced to vote based upon ignorance. Computers are the best tool in making knowledge accessible and as such should never be priced out of easy access to the majority. Every citizen should have the right to readily access all the knowledge they want, in order to make informed decision about their democracy. Not selected highlights, not edited with secrecy, not distorted by lies but factual, validated information backed with explanations and when required, taught by suitably qualified professionals. Denial of information about the society they form a part of, in order to manipulate their consent, is autocracy by ignorance.

Re:Yes he's right

[serviscope_minor]

He's right about most of the things he says, and that's also the reason why there are so many haters.

He also pulls no punches when it comes to saying uncomfortable unpleasant things. It's even worse that some of those have come to pass.

Anyway, I also predict this thread will be full of wild claims about RMS many of which are flat-out untrue and demonstrably so. Because almost every thread involving RMS winds up that way.

Developers _are_doing it

[nut]

A lot of software developers are doing what RMS says a lot of time. It's just that almost noone does it all the time.

It's clearly evident from the amount of GNU and GPL software out there that wasn't written by RMS that people are following his ideas. And that those ideas have succeeded, simply by the success of that same software in the marketplace.

It's not a failure of the ideal when developers of open source also write proprietary software to pay the bills.

Re:He's not always right.

[silentcoder]

Yes, to see the proof of your claim just look at the cooking industry. Recipes cannot be copyrighted (they are explicitly excluded from copyright protection under international law). Which is why there are no chefs. Oh wait sorry, it's why all the chefs keep their recipes strictly secret and only provided finished food and none of them ever publishes a cookbook... oh wait.

For the nitpickers: yes a cookbook can be copyrighted but the recipes inside it cannot, you are always free to copy one, modify it, use it and even put it in your own cookbook modified or not.

Software is a lot more like a chefs recipes than it is like an authors book.

Re:Any asteroid prospectors yet?

[AmiMoJo]

Well done, you managed to find the one (not entirely serious) off hand comment that seems a bit extreme in a manifesto that was, at the time, way out there. The very fact that the rest of it is pretty much taken for granted now shows just how visionary and plain right Stallman was.

These days no-one would dream of claiming that people won't work on OS for free, or that commercial companies wouldn't contribute. No-one would question the value of having OS software exist, or the high quality it can achieve, or that it is essential to our freedom in an age of NSA/GCHQ spying. You might not agree on a philosophical level but you can't really deny that this is a document that changed the world and the nature of computing, and was able to define how OS would develop over the next three decades.