15 Years of Free Software

by Richard Stallman

It is now just over 15 years since the beginning of the FreeSoftware Movement and the GNU Project. We have come a long way.

In 1984, it was impossible to use a modern computer withoutinstalling a proprietary operating system, which you would have toobtain under a restrictive license. No one was allowed to sharesoftware freely with fellow computer users, and hardly anyone couldchange software to fit his or her own needs. The owners of softwarehad erected walls to divide us from each other.

The GNU Project was founded to change all that. Its first goal: todevelop a Unix-compatible portable operating system that would be100% free software. Not 95% free, not 99.5%, but 100%—so thatusers would be free to redistribute the whole system, and free tochange and contribute to any part of it. The name of the system,GNU, is a recursive acronym meaning “GNU's NotUnix”—a way of paying tribute to the technical ideas ofUnix, while at the sametime saying that GNU is something different. Technically, GNU islike Unix. But unlike Unix, GNU gives its users freedom.

It took many years of work, by hundreds of programmers, to developthis operating system. Some were paid by the Free SoftwareFoundation and by free software companies; most were volunteers. Afew have become famous; most are known mainly within theirprofession, by other hackers who use or work on their code. Alltogether have helped to liberate the potential of the computernetwork for all humanity.

In 1991, the last major essential component of a Unix-like systemwas developed: Linux, the free kernel written by LinusTorvalds. Today, the combination of GNU and Linux is used bymillions of people around the world, and its popularity isgrowing. This month, we announced release 1.0 ofGNOME, the GNU graphical desktop, which we hope will make the GNU/Linuxsystem as easy to use as any other operating system.

But our freedom is not permanently assured. The world does not standstill, and we cannot count on having freedom five years from now,just because we have it today. Free software faces difficultchallenges and dangers. It will take determined efforts to preserveour freedom, just as it took to obtain freedom in the firstplace. Meanwhile, the operating system is just thebeginning—now we need to add free applications to handle thewhole range of jobs that users want to do.

In future columns, I will be writing about the specific challengesfacing the free software community, and other issues affectingfreedom for computer users, as well as developments affecting theGNU/Linux operating system.