GNU: the revolution turns 25

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 11 September 2008 21:39

Opinion and Analysis

The GNU Project marked the anniversary early in September, even though the actual date of its launch was September 27, 1983. British actor Stephen Fry, best known for his role as Jeeves in the BBC television series based on the works of the great Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, recorded a little video which outlined briefly the creed of the free software movement.

The torrent of coverage that such a momentous event should generate has not been seen. That's because the so-called open source movement rules the roost these days - and is anxious that people should forget their roots.

People often attribute their dislike of free software to the founder of the GNU project, Richard Stallman, and his uncompromising attitude towards many things. In the early days of the GNU project, Stallman antagonised quite a few free software hackers by his management of the development of GNU Emacs.

Stallman has also been criticised for politicising the free software movement by insisting that the distribution terms for GNU software be such that people cannot add restrictions of their own.

But those who criticise him on these counts are woefully short-sighted; the truth of the matter is that without a person like Stallman who was prepared to go out on a limb for a cause, we would all be using proprietary operating systems today.

Even Linus Torvalds, who has had major differences with Stallman on many fronts, still releases the Linux kernel under the GNU General Public Licence version 2 - and has nothing but good words for this licence.