5 originally published in the book "Open Sources"
7 The first software-sharing community
9 When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971,
10 I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many
11 years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community;
12 it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as
13 cooking. But we did it more than most.
15 The AI Lab used a timesharing operating system called ITS (the
16 Incompatible Timesharing System) that the lab's staff hackers (1) had
17 designed and written in assembler language for the Digital PDP-10, one
18 of the large computers of the era. As a member of this community, an AI
19 lab staff system hacker, my job was to improve this system.
21 We did not call our software "free software", because that term did not
22 yet exist; but that is what it was. Whenever people from another
23 university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let
24 them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program,
25 you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it,
26 change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program.
28 (1) The use of "hacker" to mean "security breaker" is a confusion on
29 the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that
30 meaning, and continue using the word to mean, "Someone who loves to
31 program and enjoys being clever about it."
33 The collapse of the community
35 The situation changed drastically in the early 1980s when Digital
36 discontinued the PDP-10 series. Its architecture, elegant and powerful
37 in the 60s, could not extend naturally to the larger address spaces
38 that were becoming feasible in the 80s. This meant that nearly all of
39 the programs composing ITS were obsolete.
41 The AI lab hacker community had already collapsed, not long before. In
42 1981, the spin-off company Symbolics had hired away nearly all of the
43 hackers from the AI lab, and the depopulated community was unable to
44 maintain itself. (The book Hackers, by Steve Levy, describes these
45 events, as well as giving a clear picture of this community in its
46 prime.) When the AI lab bought a new PDP-10 in 1982, its administrators
47 decided to use Digital's non-free timesharing system instead of ITS.
49 The modern computers of the era, such as the VAX or the 68020, had
50 their own operating systems, but none of them were free software: you
51 had to sign a nondisclosure agreement even to get an executable copy.
53 This meant that the first step in using a computer was to promise not
54 to help your neighbor. A cooperating community was forbidden. The rule
55 made by the owners of proprietary software was, "If you share with your
56 neighbor, you are a pirate. If you want any changes, beg us to make
59 The idea that the proprietary-software social system--the system that
60 says you are not allowed to share or change software--is antisocial,
61 that it is unethical, that it is simply wrong, may come as a surprise
62 to some readers. But what else could we say about a system based on
63 dividing the public and keeping users helpless? Readers who find the
64 idea surprising may have taken proprietary-software social system as
65 given, or judged it on the terms suggested by proprietary software
66 businesses. Software publishers have worked long and hard to convince
67 people that there is only one way to look at the issue.
69 When software publishers talk about "enforcing" their "rights" or
70 "stopping piracy", what they actually *say* is secondary. The real
71 message of these statements is in the unstated assumptions they take
72 for granted; the public is supposed to accept them uncritically. So
75 One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable
76 natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users.
77 (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to
78 the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the US Constitution
79 and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right,
80 but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users'
81 natural right to copy.
83 Another unstated assumption is that the only important thing about
84 software is what jobs it allows you to do--that we computer users
85 should not care what kind of society we are allowed to have.
87 A third assumption is that we would have no usable software (or would
88 never have a program to do this or that particular job) if we did not
89 offer a company power over the users of the program. This assumption
90 may have seemed plausible, before the free software movement
91 demonstrated that we can make plenty of useful software without putting
94 If we decline to accept these assumptions, and judge these issues based
95 on ordinary common-sense morality while placing the users first, we
96 arrive at very different conclusions. Computer users should be free to
97 modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because
98 helping other people is the basis of society.
100 There is no room here for an extensive statement of the reasoning
101 behind this conclusion, so I refer the reader to the web page,
102 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html.
104 A stark moral choice.
106 With my community gone, to continue as before was impossible. Instead,
107 I faced a stark moral choice.
109 The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing
110 nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker.
111 Most likely I would also be developing software that was released under
112 nondisclosure agreements, thus adding to the pressure on other people
113 to betray their fellows too.
115 I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing
116 code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on
117 years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life
118 making the world a worse place.
120 I had already experienced being on the receiving end of a nondisclosure
121 agreement, when someone refused to give me and the MIT AI lab the
122 source code for the control program for our printer. (The lack of
123 certain features in this program made use of the printer extremely
124 frustrating.) So I could not tell myself that nondisclosure agreements
125 were innocent. I was very angry when he refused to share with us; I
126 could not turn around and do the same thing to everyone else.
128 Another choice, straightforward but unpleasant, was to leave the
129 computer field. That way my skills would not be misused, but they would
130 still be wasted. I would not be culpable for dividing and restricting
131 computer users, but it would happen nonetheless.
133 So I looked for a way that a programmer could do something for the
134 good. I asked myself, was there a program or programs that I could
135 write, so as to make a community possible once again?
137 The answer was clear: what was needed first was an operating system.
138 That is the crucial software for starting to use a computer. With an
139 operating system, you can do many things; without one, you cannot run
140 the computer at all. With a free operating system, we could again have
141 a community of cooperating hackers--and invite anyone to join. And
142 anyone would be able to use a computer without starting out by
143 conspiring to deprive his or her friends.
145 As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job.
146 So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I
147 was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with
148 Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily
149 switch to it. The name GNU was chosen following a hacker tradition, as
150 a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix."
152 An operating system does not mean just a kernel, barely enough to run
153 other programs. In the 1970s, every operating system worthy of the name
154 included command processors, assemblers, compilers, interpreters,
155 debuggers, text editors, mailers, and much more. ITS had them, Multics
156 had them, VMS had them, and Unix had them. The GNU operating system
157 would include them too.
159 Later I heard these words, attributed to Hillel (1):
161 If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
162 If I am only for myself, what am I?
165 The decision to start the GNU project was based on a similar spirit.
167 (1) As an Atheist, I don't follow any religious leaders, but I
168 sometimes find I admire something one of them has said.
172 The term "free software" is sometimes misunderstood--it has nothing to
173 do with price. It is about freedom. Here, therefore, is the definition
174 of free software: a program is free software, for you, a particular
176 * You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
177 * You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To
178 make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to
179 the source code, since making changes in a program without having
180 the source code is exceedingly difficult.)
181 * You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a
183 * You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the
184 program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.
186 Since "free" refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction
187 between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell
188 copies is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are
189 important for the community, and selling them is an important way to
190 raise funds for free software development. Therefore, a program which
191 people are not free to include on these collections is not free
194 Because of the ambiguity of "free", people have long looked for
195 alternatives, but no one has found a suitable alternative. The English
196 Language has more words and nuances than any other, but it lacks a
197 simple, unambiguous, word that means "free", as in
198 freedom--"unfettered" being the word that comes closest in meaning.
199 Such alternatives as "liberated", "freedom", and "open" have either the
200 wrong meaning or some other disadvantage.
202 GNU software and the GNU system
204 Developing a whole system is a very large project. To bring it into
205 reach, I decided to adapt and use existing pieces of free software
206 wherever that was possible. For example, I decided at the very
207 beginning to use TeX as the principal text formatter; a few years
208 later, I decided to use the X Window System rather than writing another
209 window system for GNU.
211 Because of this decision, the GNU system is not the same as the
212 collection of all GNU software. The GNU system includes programs that
213 are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and
214 projects for their own purposes, but which we can use because they are
217 Commencing the project
219 In January 1984 I quit my job at MIT and began writing GNU software.
220 Leaving MIT was necessary so that MIT would not be able to interfere
221 with distributing GNU as free software. If I had remained on the staff,
222 MIT could have claimed to own the work, and could have imposed their
223 own distribution terms, or even turned the work into a proprietary
224 software package. I had no intention of doing a large amount of work
225 only to see it become useless for its intended purpose: creating a new
226 software-sharing community.
228 However, Professor Winston, then the head of the MIT AI Lab, kindly
229 invited me to keep using the lab's facilities.
233 Shortly before beginning the GNU project, I heard about the Free
234 University Compiler Kit, also known as VUCK. (The Dutch word for "free"
235 is written with a V.) This was a compiler designed to handle multiple
236 languages, including C and Pascal, and to support multiple target
237 machines. I wrote to its author asking if GNU could use it.
239 He responded derisively, stating that the university was free but the
240 compiler was not. I therefore decided that my first program for the GNU
241 project would be a multi-language, multi-platform compiler.
243 Hoping to avoid the need to write the whole compiler myself, I obtained
244 the source code for the Pastel compiler, which was a multi-platform
245 compiler developed at Lawrence Livermore Lab. It supported, and was
246 written in, an extended version of Pascal, designed to be a
247 system-programming language. I added a C front end, and began porting
248 it to the Motorola 68000 computer. But I had to give that up when I
249 discovered that the compiler needed many megabytes of stack space, and
250 the available 68000 Unix system would only allow 64k.
252 I then realized that the Pastel compiler functioned by parsing the
253 entire input file into a syntax tree, converting the whole syntax tree
254 into a chain of "instructions", and then generating the whole output
255 file, without ever freeing any storage. At this point, I concluded I
256 would have to write a new compiler from scratch. That new compiler is
257 now known as GCC; none of the Pastel compiler is used in it, but I
258 managed to adapt and use the C front end that I had written. But that
259 was some years later; first, I worked on GNU Emacs.
263 I began work on GNU Emacs in September 1984, and in early 1985 it was
264 beginning to be usable. This enabled me to begin using Unix systems to
265 do editing; having no interest in learning to use vi or ed, I had done
266 my editing on other kinds of machines until then.
268 At this point, people began wanting to use GNU Emacs, which raised the
269 question of how to distribute it. Of course, I put it on the anonymous
270 ftp server on the MIT computer that I used. (This computer,
271 prep.ai.mit.edu, thus became the principal GNU ftp distribution site;
272 when it was decommissioned a few years later, we transferred the name
273 to our new ftp server.) But at that time, many of the interested people
274 were not on the Internet and could not get a copy by ftp. So the
275 question was, what would I say to them?
277 I could have said, "Find a friend who is on the net and who will make a
278 copy for you." Or I could have done what I did with the original PDP-10
279 Emacs: tell them, "Mail me a tape and a SASE, and I will mail it back
280 with Emacs on it." But I had no job, and I was looking for ways to make
281 money from free software. So I announced that I would mail a tape to
282 whoever wanted one, for a fee of $150. In this way, I started a free
283 software distribution business, the precursor of the companies that
284 today distribute entire Linux-based GNU systems.
286 Is a program free for every user?
288 If a program is free software when it leaves the hands of its author,
289 this does not necessarily mean it will be free software for everyone
290 who has a copy of it. For example, public domain software (software
291 that is not copyrighted) is free software; but anyone can make a
292 proprietary modified version of it. Likewise, many free programs are
293 copyrighted but distributed under simple permissive licenses which
294 allow proprietary modified versions.
296 The paradigmatic example of this problem is the X Window System.
297 Developed at MIT, and released as free software with a permissive
298 license, it was soon adopted by various computer companies. They added
299 X to their proprietary Unix systems, in binary form only, and covered
300 by the same nondisclosure agreement. These copies of X were no more
301 free software than Unix was.
303 The developers of the X Window System did not consider this a
304 problem--they expected and intended this to happen. Their goal was not
305 freedom, just "success", defined as "having many users." They did not
306 care whether these users had freedom, only that they should be
309 This led to a paradoxical situation where two different ways of
310 counting the amount of freedom gave different answers to the question,
311 "Is this program free?" If you judged based on the freedom provided by
312 the distribution terms of the MIT release, you would say that X was
313 free software. But if you measured the freedom of the average user of
314 X, you would have to say it was proprietary software. Most X users were
315 running the proprietary versions that came with Unix systems, not the
318 Copyleft and the GNU GPL
320 The goal of GNU was to give users freedom, not just to be popular. So
321 we needed to use distribution terms that would prevent GNU software
322 from being turned into proprietary software. The method we use is
323 called "copyleft".(1)
325 Copyleft uses copyright law, but flips it over to serve the opposite of
326 its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, it
327 becomes a means of keeping software free.
329 The central idea of copyleft is that we give everyone permission to run
330 the program, copy the program, modify the program, and distribute
331 modified versions--but not permission to add restrictions of their own.
332 Thus, the crucial freedoms that define "free software" are guaranteed
333 to everyone who has a copy; they become inalienable rights.
335 For an effective copyleft, modified versions must also be free. This
336 ensures that work based on ours becomes available to our community if
337 it is published. When programmers who have jobs as programmers
338 volunteer to improve GNU software, it is copyleft that prevents their
339 employers from saying, "You can't share those changes, because we are
340 going to use them to make our proprietary version of the program."
342 The requirement that changes must be free is essential if we want to
343 ensure freedom for every user of the program. The companies that
344 privatized the X Window System usually made some changes to port it to
345 their systems and hardware. These changes were small compared with the
346 great extent of X, but they were not trivial. If making changes were an
347 excuse to deny the users freedom, it would be easy for anyone to take
348 advantage of the excuse.
350 A related issue concerns combining a free program with non-free code.
351 Such a combination would inevitably be non-free; whichever freedoms are
352 lacking for the non-free part would be lacking for the whole as well.
353 To permit such combinations would open a hole big enough to sink a
354 ship. Therefore, a crucial requirement for copyleft is to plug this
355 hole: anything added to or combined with a copylefted program must be
356 such that the larger combined version is also free and copylefted.
358 The specific implementation of copyleft that we use for most GNU
359 software is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. We
360 have other kinds of copyleft that are used in specific circumstances.
361 GNU manuals are copylefted also, but use a much simpler kind of
362 copyleft, because the complexity of the GNU GPL is not necessary for
365 (1) In 1984 or 1985, Don Hopkins (a very imaginative fellow) mailed me
366 a letter. On the envelope he had written several amusing sayings,
367 including this one: "Copyleft--all rights reversed." I used the word
368 "copyleft" to name the distribution concept I was developing at the
371 (2) We now use the GNU Free Documentation License for documentation.
373 The Free Software Foundation
375 As interest in using Emacs was growing, other people became involved in
376 the GNU project, and we decided that it was time to seek funding once
377 again. So in 1985 we created the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt
378 charity for free software development. The FSF also took over the Emacs
379 tape distribution business; later it extended this by adding other free
380 software (both GNU and non-GNU) to the tape, and by selling free
383 The FSF accepts donations, but most of its income has always come from
384 sales--of copies of free software, and of other related services. Today
385 it sells CD-ROMs of source code, CD-ROMs with binaries, nicely printed
386 manuals (all with freedom to redistribute and modify), and Deluxe
387 Distributions (where we build the whole collection of software for your
390 Free Software Foundation employees have written and maintained a number
391 of GNU software packages. Two notable ones are the C library and the
392 shell. The GNU C library is what every program running on a GNU/Linux
393 system uses to communicate with Linux. It was developed by a member of
394 the Free Software Foundation staff, Roland McGrath. The shell used on
395 most GNU/Linux systems is BASH, the Bourne Again Shell(1), which was
396 developed by FSF employee Brian Fox.
398 We funded development of these programs because the GNU project was not
399 just about tools or a development environment. Our goal was a complete
400 operating system, and these programs were needed for that goal.
402 (1) "Bourne again Shell" is a joke on the name ``Bourne Shell'', which
403 was the usual shell on Unix.
405 Free software support
407 The free software philosophy rejects a specific widespread business
408 practice, but it is not against business. When businesses respect the
409 users' freedom, we wish them success.
411 Selling copies of Emacs demonstrates one kind of free software
412 business. When the FSF took over that business, I needed another way to
413 make a living. I found it in selling services relating to the free
414 software I had developed. This included teaching, for subjects such as
415 how to program GNU Emacs and how to customize GCC, and software
416 development, mostly porting GCC to new platforms.
418 Today each of these kinds of free software business is practiced by a
419 number of corporations. Some distribute free software collections on
420 CD-ROM; others sell support at levels ranging from answering user
421 questions, to fixing bugs, to adding major new features. We are even
422 beginning to see free software companies based on launching new free
425 Watch out, though--a number of companies that associate themselves with
426 the term "open source" actually base their business on non-free
427 software that works with free software. These are not free software
428 companies, they are proprietary software companies whose products tempt
429 users away from freedom. They call these "value added", which reflects
430 the values they would like us to adopt: convenience above freedom. If
431 we value freedom more, we should call them "freedom subtracted"
436 The principal goal of GNU was to be free software. Even if GNU had no
437 technical advantage over Unix, it would have a social advantage,
438 allowing users to cooperate, and an ethical advantage, respecting the
441 But it was natural to apply the known standards of good practice to the
442 work--for example, dynamically allocating data structures to avoid
443 arbitrary fixed size limits, and handling all the possible 8-bit codes
444 wherever that made sense.
446 In addition, we rejected the Unix focus on small memory size, by
447 deciding not to support 16-bit machines (it was clear that 32-bit
448 machines would be the norm by the time the GNU system was finished),
449 and to make no effort to reduce memory usage unless it exceeded a
450 megabyte. In programs for which handling very large files was not
451 crucial, we encouraged programmers to read an entire input file into
452 core, then scan its contents without having to worry about I/O.
454 These decisions enabled many GNU programs to surpass their Unix
455 counterparts in reliability and speed.
459 As the GNU project's reputation grew, people began offering to donate
460 machines running UNIX to the project. These were very useful, because
461 the easiest way to develop components of GNU was to do it on a UNIX
462 system, and replace the components of that system one by one. But they
463 raised an ethical issue: whether it was right for us to have a copy of
466 UNIX was (and is) proprietary software, and the GNU project's
467 philosophy said that we should not use proprietary software. But,
468 applying the same reasoning that leads to the conclusion that violence
469 in self defense is justified, I concluded that it was legitimate to use
470 a proprietary package when that was crucial for developing a free
471 replacement that would help others stop using the proprietary package.
473 But, even if this was a justifiable evil, it was still an evil. Today
474 we no longer have any copies of Unix, because we have replaced them
475 with free operating systems. If we could not replace a machine's
476 operating system with a free one, we replaced the machine instead.
480 As the GNU project proceeded, and increasing numbers of system
481 components were found or developed, eventually it became useful to make
482 a list of the remaining gaps. We used it to recruit developers to write
483 the missing pieces. This list became known as the GNU task list. In
484 addition to missing Unix components, we listed added various other
485 useful software and documentation projects that, we thought, a truly
486 complete system ought to have.
488 Today, hardly any Unix components are left in the GNU task list--those
489 jobs have been done, aside from a few inessential ones. But the list is
490 full of projects that some might call "applications". Any program that
491 appeals to more than a narrow class of users would be a useful thing to
492 add to an operating system.
494 Even games are included in the task list--and have been since the
495 beginning. Unix included games, so naturally GNU should too. But
496 compatibility was not an issue for games, so we did not follow the list
497 of games that Unix had. Instead, we listed a spectrum of different
498 kinds of games that users might like.
502 The GNU C library uses a special kind of copyleft called the GNU
503 Library General Public License(1), which gives permission to link
504 proprietary software with the library. Why make this exception?
506 It is not a matter of principle; there is no principle that says
507 proprietary software products are entitled to include our code. (Why
508 contribute to a project predicated on refusing to share with us?) Using
509 the LGPL for the C library, or for any library, is a matter of
512 The C library does a generic job; every proprietary system or compiler
513 comes with a C library. Therefore, to make our C library available only
514 to free software would not have given free software any advantage--it
515 would only have discouraged use of our library.
517 One system is an exception to this: on the GNU system (and this
518 includes GNU/Linux), the GNU C library is the only C library. So the
519 distribution terms of the GNU C library determine whether it is
520 possible to compile a proprietary program for the GNU system. There is
521 no ethical reason to allow proprietary applications on the GNU system,
522 but strategically it seems that disallowing them would do more to
523 discourage use of the GNU system than to encourage development of free
526 That is why using the Library GPL is a good strategy for the C library.
527 For other libraries, the strategic decision needs to be considered on a
528 case-by-case basis. When a library does a special job that can help
529 write certain kinds of programs, then releasing it under the GPL,
530 limiting it to free programs only, is a way of helping other free
531 software developers, giving them an advantage against proprietary
534 Consider GNU Readline, a library that was developed to provide
535 command-line editing for BASH. Readline is released under the ordinary
536 GNU GPL, not the Library GPL. This probably does reduce the amount
537 Readline is used, but that is no loss for us. Meanwhile, at least one
538 useful application has been made free software specifically so it could
539 use Readline, and that is a real gain for the community.
541 Proprietary software developers have the advantages money provides;
542 free software developers need to make advantages for each other. I hope
543 some day we will have a large collection of GPL-covered libraries that
544 have no parallel available to proprietary software, providing useful
545 modules to serve as building blocks in new free software, and adding up
546 to a major advantage for further free software development.
548 (1) This license is now called the GNU Lesser General Public License,
549 to avoid giving the idea that all libraries ought to use it.
550 See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html.
554 Eric Raymond says that "Every good work of software starts by
555 scratching a developer's personal itch." Maybe that happens sometimes,
556 but many essential pieces of GNU software were developed in order to
557 have a complete free operating system. They come from a vision and a
558 plan, not from impulse.
560 For example, we developed the GNU C library because a Unix-like system
561 needs a C library, the Bourne-Again Shell (bash) because a Unix-like
562 system needs a shell, and GNU tar because a Unix-like system needs a
563 tar program. The same is true for my own programs--the GNU C compiler,
564 GNU Emacs, GDB and GNU Make.
566 Some GNU programs were developed to cope with specific threats to our
567 freedom. Thus, we developed gzip to replace the Compress program, which
568 had been lost to the community because of the LZW patents. We found
569 people to develop LessTif, and more recently started GNOME and Harmony,
570 to address the problems caused by certain proprietary libraries (see
571 below). We are developing the GNU Privacy Guard to replace popular
572 non-free encryption software, because users should not have to choose
573 between privacy and freedom.
575 Of course, the people writing these programs became interested in the
576 work, and many features were added to them by various people for the
577 sake of their own needs and interests. But that is not why the programs
580 Unexpected developments
582 At the beginning of the GNU project, I imagined that we would develop
583 the whole GNU system, then release it as a whole. That is not how it
586 Since each component of the GNU system was implemented on a Unix
587 system, each component could run on Unix systems, long before a
588 complete GNU system existed. Some of these programs became popular, and
589 users began extending them and porting them---to the various
590 incompatible versions of Unix, and sometimes to other systems as well.
592 The process made these programs much more powerful, and attracted both
593 funds and contributors to the GNU project. But it probably also delayed
594 completion of a minimal working system by several years, as GNU
595 developers' time was put into maintaining these ports and adding
596 features to the existing components, rather than moving on to write one
597 missing component after another.
601 By 1990, the GNU system was almost complete; the only major missing
602 component was the kernel. We had decided to implement our kernel as a
603 collection of server processes running on top of Mach. Mach is a
604 microkernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University and then at the
605 University of Utah; the GNU HURD is a collection of servers (or ``herd
606 of gnus'') that run on top of Mach, and do the various jobs of the Unix
607 kernel. The start of development was delayed as we waited for Mach to
608 be released as free software, as had been promised.
610 One reason for choosing this design was to avoid what seemed to be the
611 hardest part of the job: debugging a kernel program without a
612 source-level debugger to do it with. This part of the job had been done
613 already, in Mach, and we expected to debug the HURD servers as user
614 programs, with GDB. But it took a long time to make that possible, and
615 the multi-threaded servers that send messages to each other have turned
616 out to be very hard to debug. Making the HURD work solidly has
617 stretched on for many years.
621 The GNU kernel was not originally supposed to be called the HURD. Its
622 original name was Alix--named after the woman who was my sweetheart at
623 the time. She, a Unix system administrator, had pointed out how her
624 name would fit a common naming pattern for Unix system versions; as a
625 joke, she told her friends, "Someone should name a kernel after me." I
626 said nothing, but decided to surprise her with a kernel named Alix.
628 It did not stay that way. Michael Bushnell (now Thomas), the main
629 developer of the kernel, preferred the name HURD, and redefined Alix to
630 refer to a certain part of the kernel--the part that would trap system
631 calls and handle them by sending messages to HURD servers.
633 Ultimately, Alix and I broke up, and she changed her name;
634 independently, the HURD design was changed so that the C library would
635 send messages directly to servers, and this made the Alix component
636 disappear from the design.
638 But before these things happened, a friend of hers came across the name
639 Alix in the HURD source code, and mentioned the name to her. So the
644 The GNU Hurd is not ready for production use. Fortunately, another
645 kernel is available. In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed a
646 Unix-compatible kernel and called it Linux. Around 1992, combining
647 Linux with the not-quite-complete GNU system resulted in a complete
648 free operating system. (Combining them was a substantial job in itself,
649 of course.) It is due to Linux that we can actually run a version of
650 the GNU system today.
652 We call this system version GNU/Linux, to express its composition as a
653 combination of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel.
655 Challenges in our future
657 We have proved our ability to develop a broad spectrum of free
658 software. This does not mean we are invincible and unstoppable. Several
659 challenges make the future of free software uncertain; meeting them
660 will require steadfast effort and endurance, sometimes lasting for
661 years. It will require the kind of determination that people display
662 when they value their freedom and will not let anyone take it away.
664 The following four sections discuss these challenges.
668 Hardware manufacturers increasingly tend to keep hardware
669 specifications secret. This makes it difficult to write free drivers so
670 that Linux and XFree86 can support new hardware. We have complete free
671 systems today, but we will not have them tomorrow if we cannot support
672 tomorrow's computers.
674 There are two ways to cope with this problem. Programmers can do
675 reverse engineering to figure out how to support the hardware. The rest
676 of us can choose the hardware that is supported by free software; as
677 our numbers increase, secrecy of specifications will become a
678 self-defeating policy.
680 Reverse engineering is a big job; will we have programmers with
681 sufficient determination to undertake it? Yes--if we have built up a
682 strong feeling that free software is a matter of principle, and
683 non-free drivers are intolerable. And will large numbers of us spend
684 extra money, or even a little extra time, so we can use free drivers?
685 Yes, if the determination to have freedom is widespread.
689 A non-free library that runs on free operating systems acts as a trap
690 for free software developers. The library's attractive features are the
691 bait; if you use the library, you fall into the trap, because your
692 program cannot usefully be part of a free operating system. (Strictly
693 speaking, we could include your program, but it won't run with the
694 library missing.) Even worse, if a program that uses the proprietary
695 library becomes popular, it can lure other unsuspecting programmers
698 The first instance of this problem was the Motif toolkit, back in the
699 80s. Although there were as yet no free operating systems, it was clear
700 what problem Motif would cause for them later on. The GNU Project
701 responded in two ways: by asking individual free software projects to
702 support the free X toolkit widgets as well as Motif, and by asking for
703 someone to write a free replacement for Motif. The job took many years;
704 LessTif, developed by the Hungry Programmers, became powerful enough to
705 support most Motif applications only in 1997.
707 Between 1996 and 1998, another non-free GUI toolkit library, called Qt,
708 was used in a substantial collection of free software, the desktop KDE.
710 Free GNU/Linux systems were unable to use KDE, because we could not use
711 the library. However, some commercial distributors of GNU/Linux systems
712 who were not strict about sticking with free software added KDE to
713 their systems--producing a system with more capabilities, but less
714 freedom. The KDE group was actively encouraging more programmers to use
715 Qt, and millions of new "Linux users" had never been exposed to the
716 idea that there was a problem in this. The situation appeared grim.
718 The free software community responded to the problem in two ways: GNOME
721 GNOME, the GNU Network Object Model Environment, is GNU's desktop
722 project. Started in 1997 by Miguel de Icaza, and developed with the
723 support of Red Hat Software, GNOME set out to provide similar desktop
724 facilities, but using free software exclusively. It has technical
725 advantages as well, such as supporting a variety of languages, not just
726 C++. But its main purpose was freedom: not to require the use of any
729 Harmony is a compatible replacement library, designed to make it
730 possible to run KDE software without using Qt.
732 In November 1998, the developers of Qt announced a change of license
733 which, when carried out, should make Qt free software. There is no way
734 to be sure, but I think that this was partly due to the community's
735 firm response to the problem that Qt posed when it was non-free. (The
736 new license is inconvenient and inequitable, so it remains desirable to
739 [Subsequent note: in September 2000, Qt was rereleased under the GNU
740 GPL, which essentially solved this problem.]
742 How will we respond to the next tempting non-free library? Will the
743 whole community understand the need to stay out of the trap? Or will
744 many of us give up freedom for convenience, and produce a major
745 problem? Our future depends on our philosophy.
749 The worst threat we face comes from software patents, which can put
750 algorithms and features off limits to free software for up to twenty
751 years. The LZW compression algorithm patents were applied for in 1983,
752 and we still cannot release free software to produce proper compressed
753 GIFs. In 1998, a free program to produce MP3 compressed audio was
754 removed from distribution under threat of a patent suit.
756 There are ways to cope with patents: we can search for evidence that a
757 patent is invalid, and we can look for alternative ways to do a job.
758 But each of these methods works only sometimes; when both fail, a
759 patent may force all free software to lack some feature that users
760 want. What will we do when this happens?
762 Those of us who value free software for freedom's sake will stay with
763 free software anyway. We will manage to get work done without the
764 patented features. But those who value free software because they
765 expect it to be technically superior are likely to call it a failure
766 when a patent holds it back. Thus, while it is useful to talk about the
767 practical effectiveness of the "cathedral" model of development (1),
768 and the reliability and power of some free software, we must not stop
769 there. We must talk about freedom and principle.
771 (1) It would have been clearer to write `of the "bazaar" model', since
772 that was the alternative that was new and initially controversial.
776 The biggest deficiency in our free operating systems is not in the
777 software--it is the lack of good free manuals that we can include in
778 our systems. Documentation is an essential part of any software
779 package; when an important free software package does not come with a
780 good free manual, that is a major gap. We have many such gaps today.
782 Free documentation, like free software, is a matter of freedom, not
783 price. The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for
784 free software: it is a matter of giving all users certain freedoms.
785 Redistribution (including commercial sale) must be permitted, on-line
786 and on paper, so that the manual can accompany every copy of the
789 Permission for modification is crucial too. As a general rule, I don't
790 believe that it is essential for people to have permission to modify
791 all sorts of articles and books. For example, I don't think you or I
792 are obliged to give permission to modify articles like this one, which
793 describe our actions and our views.
795 But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial
796 for documentation for free software. When people exercise their right
797 to modify the software, and add or change its features, if they are
798 conscientious they will change the manual too--so they can provide
799 accurate and usable documentation with the modified program. A manual
800 which does not allow programmers to be conscientious and finish the
801 job, does not fill our community's needs.
803 Some kinds of limits on how modifications are done pose no problem. For
804 example, requirements to preserve the original author's copyright
805 notice, the distribution terms, or the list of authors, are ok. It is
806 also no problem to require modified versions to include notice that
807 they were modified, even to have entire sections that may not be
808 deleted or changed, as long as these sections deal with nontechnical
809 topics. These kinds of restrictions are not a problem because they
810 don't stop the conscientious programmer from adapting the manual to fit
811 the modified program. In other words, they don't block the free
812 software community from making full use of the manual.
814 However, it must be possible to modify all the *technical* content of
815 the manual, and then distribute the result in all the usual media,
816 through all the usual channels; otherwise, the restrictions do obstruct
817 the community, the manual is not free, and we need another manual.
819 Will free software developers have the awareness and determination to
820 produce a full spectrum of free manuals? Once again, our future depends
823 We must talk about freedom
825 Estimates today are that there are ten million users of GNU/Linux
826 systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and Red Hat Linux. Free software has
827 developed such practical advantages that users are flocking to it for
828 purely practical reasons.
830 The good consequences of this are evident: more interest in developing
831 free software, more customers for free software businesses, and more
832 ability to encourage companies to develop commercial free software
833 instead of proprietary software products.
835 But interest in the software is growing faster than awareness of the
836 philosophy it is based on, and this leads to trouble. Our ability to
837 meet the challenges and threats described above depends on the will to
838 stand firm for freedom. To make sure our community has this will, we
839 need to spread the idea to the new users as they come into the
842 But we are failing to do so: the efforts to attract new users into our
843 community are far outstripping the efforts to teach them the civics of
844 our community. We need to do both, and we need to keep the two efforts
849 Teaching new users about freedom became more difficult in 1998, when a
850 part of the community decided to stop using the term "free software"
851 and say "open source software" instead.
853 Some who favored this term aimed to avoid the confusion of "free" with
854 "gratis"--a valid goal. Others, however, aimed to set aside the spirit
855 of principle that had motivated the free software movement and the GNU
856 project, and to appeal instead to executives and business users, many
857 of whom hold an ideology that places profit above freedom, above
858 community, above principle. Thus, the rhetoric of "open source" focuses
859 on the potential to make high quality, powerful software, but shuns the
860 ideas of freedom, community, and principle.
862 The "Linux" magazines are a clear example of this--they are filled with
863 advertisements for proprietary software that works with GNU/Linux. When
864 the next Motif or Qt appears, will these magazines warn programmers to
865 stay away from it, or will they run ads for it?
867 The support of business can contribute to the community in many ways;
868 all else being equal, it is useful. But winning their support by
869 speaking even less about freedom and principle can be disastrous; it
870 makes the previous imbalance between outreach and civics education even
873 "Free software" and "open source" describe the same category of
874 software, more or less, but say different things about the software,
875 and about values. The GNU Project continues to use the term "free
876 software", to express the idea that freedom, not just technology, is
881 Yoda's philosophy ("There is no `try'") sounds neat, but it doesn't
882 work for me. I have done most of my work while anxious about whether I
883 could do the job, and unsure that it would be enough to achieve the
884 goal if I did. But I tried anyway, because there was no one but me
885 between the enemy and my city. Surprising myself, I have sometimes
888 Sometimes I failed; some of my cities have fallen. Then I found another
889 threatened city, and got ready for another battle. Over time, I've
890 learned to look for threats and put myself between them and my city,
891 calling on other hackers to come and join me.
893 Nowadays, often I'm not the only one. It is a relief and a joy when I
894 see a regiment of hackers digging in to hold the line, and I realize,
895 this city may survive--for now. But the dangers are greater each year,
896 and now Microsoft has explicitly targeted our community. We can't take
897 the future of freedom for granted. Don't take it for granted! If you
898 want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it.
900 Copyright (C) 1998 Richard Stallman
902 Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted
903 in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
HCoop / bpt / emacs.git / blob