- The GNU Project
-
- by Richard Stallman
-
- originally published in the book "Open Sources"
-
- The first software-sharing community
-
- When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971,
- I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many
- years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community;
- it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as
- cooking. But we did it more than most.
-
- The AI Lab used a timesharing operating system called ITS (the
- Incompatible Timesharing System) that the lab's staff hackers (1) had
- designed and written in assembler language for the Digital PDP-10, one
- of the large computers of the era. As a member of this community, an AI
- lab staff system hacker, my job was to improve this system.
-
- We did not call our software "free software", because that term did not
- yet exist; but that is what it was. Whenever people from another
- university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let
- them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program,
- you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it,
- change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program.
-
- (1) The use of "hacker" to mean "security breaker" is a confusion on
- the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that
- meaning, and continue using the word to mean, "Someone who loves to
- program and enjoys being clever about it."
-
- The collapse of the community
-
- The situation changed drastically in the early 1980s when Digital
- discontinued the PDP-10 series. Its architecture, elegant and powerful
- in the 60s, could not extend naturally to the larger address spaces
- that were becoming feasible in the 80s. This meant that nearly all of
- the programs composing ITS were obsolete.
-
- The AI lab hacker community had already collapsed, not long before. In
- 1981, the spin-off company Symbolics had hired away nearly all of the
- hackers from the AI lab, and the depopulated community was unable to
- maintain itself. (The book Hackers, by Steve Levy, describes these
- events, as well as giving a clear picture of this community in its
- prime.) When the AI lab bought a new PDP-10 in 1982, its administrators
- decided to use Digital's non-free timesharing system instead of ITS.
-
- The modern computers of the era, such as the VAX or the 68020, had
- their own operating systems, but none of them were free software: you
- had to sign a nondisclosure agreement even to get an executable copy.
-
- This meant that the first step in using a computer was to promise not
- to help your neighbor. A cooperating community was forbidden. The rule
- made by the owners of proprietary software was, "If you share with your
- neighbor, you are a pirate. If you want any changes, beg us to make
- them."
-
- The idea that the proprietary-software social system--the system that
- says you are not allowed to share or change software--is antisocial,
- that it is unethical, that it is simply wrong, may come as a surprise
- to some readers. But what else could we say about a system based on
- dividing the public and keeping users helpless? Readers who find the
- idea surprising may have taken proprietary-software social system as
- given, or judged it on the terms suggested by proprietary software
- businesses. Software publishers have worked long and hard to convince
- people that there is only one way to look at the issue.
-
- When software publishers talk about "enforcing" their "rights" or
- "stopping piracy", what they actually *say* is secondary. The real
- message of these statements is in the unstated assumptions they take
- for granted; the public is supposed to accept them uncritically. So
- let's examine them.
-
- One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable
- natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users.
- (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to
- the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the US Constitution
- and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right,
- but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users'
- natural right to copy.
-
- Another unstated assumption is that the only important thing about
- software is what jobs it allows you to do--that we computer users
- should not care what kind of society we are allowed to have.
-
- A third assumption is that we would have no usable software (or would
- never have a program to do this or that particular job) if we did not
- offer a company power over the users of the program. This assumption
- may have seemed plausible, before the free software movement
- demonstrated that we can make plenty of useful software without putting
- chains on it.
-
- If we decline to accept these assumptions, and judge these issues based
- on ordinary common-sense morality while placing the users first, we
- arrive at very different conclusions. Computer users should be free to
- modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because
- helping other people is the basis of society.
-
- There is no room here for an extensive statement of the reasoning
- behind this conclusion, so I refer the reader to the web page,
- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html.
-
- A stark moral choice.
-
- With my community gone, to continue as before was impossible. Instead,
- I faced a stark moral choice.
-
- The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing
- nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker.
- Most likely I would also be developing software that was released under
- nondisclosure agreements, thus adding to the pressure on other people
- to betray their fellows too.
-
- I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing
- code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on
- years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life
- making the world a worse place.
-
- I had already experienced being on the receiving end of a nondisclosure
- agreement, when someone refused to give me and the MIT AI lab the
- source code for the control program for our printer. (The lack of
- certain features in this program made use of the printer extremely
- frustrating.) So I could not tell myself that nondisclosure agreements
- were innocent. I was very angry when he refused to share with us; I
- could not turn around and do the same thing to everyone else.
-
- Another choice, straightforward but unpleasant, was to leave the
- computer field. That way my skills would not be misused, but they would
- still be wasted. I would not be culpable for dividing and restricting
- computer users, but it would happen nonetheless.
-
- So I looked for a way that a programmer could do something for the
- good. I asked myself, was there a program or programs that I could
- write, so as to make a community possible once again?
-
- The answer was clear: what was needed first was an operating system.
- That is the crucial software for starting to use a computer. With an
- operating system, you can do many things; without one, you cannot run
- the computer at all. With a free operating system, we could again have
- a community of cooperating hackers--and invite anyone to join. And
- anyone would be able to use a computer without starting out by
- conspiring to deprive his or her friends.
-
- As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job.
- So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I
- was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with
- Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily
- switch to it. The name GNU was chosen following a hacker tradition, as
- a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix."
-
- An operating system does not mean just a kernel, barely enough to run
- other programs. In the 1970s, every operating system worthy of the name
- included command processors, assemblers, compilers, interpreters,
- debuggers, text editors, mailers, and much more. ITS had them, Multics
- had them, VMS had them, and Unix had them. The GNU operating system
- would include them too.
-
- Later I heard these words, attributed to Hillel (1):
-
- If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
- If I am only for myself, what am I?
- If not now, when?
-
- The decision to start the GNU project was based on a similar spirit.
-
- (1) As an Atheist, I don't follow any religious leaders, but I
- sometimes find I admire something one of them has said.
-
- Free as in freedom
-
- The term "free software" is sometimes misunderstood--it has nothing to
- do with price. It is about freedom. Here, therefore, is the definition
- of free software: a program is free software, for you, a particular
- user, if:
- * You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- * You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To
- make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to
- the source code, since making changes in a program without having
- the source code is exceedingly difficult.)
- * You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a
- fee.
- * You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the
- program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.
-
- Since "free" refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction
- between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell
- copies is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are
- important for the community, and selling them is an important way to
- raise funds for free software development. Therefore, a program which
- people are not free to include on these collections is not free
- software.
-
- Because of the ambiguity of "free", people have long looked for
- alternatives, but no one has found a suitable alternative. The English
- Language has more words and nuances than any other, but it lacks a
- simple, unambiguous, word that means "free", as in
- freedom--"unfettered" being the word that comes closest in meaning.
- Such alternatives as "liberated", "freedom", and "open" have either the
- wrong meaning or some other disadvantage.
-
- GNU software and the GNU system
-
- Developing a whole system is a very large project. To bring it into
- reach, I decided to adapt and use existing pieces of free software
- wherever that was possible. For example, I decided at the very
- beginning to use TeX as the principal text formatter; a few years
- later, I decided to use the X Window System rather than writing another
- window system for GNU.
-
- Because of this decision, the GNU system is not the same as the
- collection of all GNU software. The GNU system includes programs that
- are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and
- projects for their own purposes, but which we can use because they are
- free software.
-
- Commencing the project
-
- In January 1984 I quit my job at MIT and began writing GNU software.
- Leaving MIT was necessary so that MIT would not be able to interfere
- with distributing GNU as free software. If I had remained on the staff,
- MIT could have claimed to own the work, and could have imposed their
- own distribution terms, or even turned the work into a proprietary
- software package. I had no intention of doing a large amount of work
- only to see it become useless for its intended purpose: creating a new
- software-sharing community.
-
- However, Professor Winston, then the head of the MIT AI Lab, kindly
- invited me to keep using the lab's facilities.
-
- The first steps
-
- Shortly before beginning the GNU project, I heard about the Free
- University Compiler Kit, also known as VUCK. (The Dutch word for "free"
- is written with a V.) This was a compiler designed to handle multiple
- languages, including C and Pascal, and to support multiple target
- machines. I wrote to its author asking if GNU could use it.
-
- He responded derisively, stating that the university was free but the
- compiler was not. I therefore decided that my first program for the GNU
- project would be a multi-language, multi-platform compiler.
-
- Hoping to avoid the need to write the whole compiler myself, I obtained
- the source code for the Pastel compiler, which was a multi-platform
- compiler developed at Lawrence Livermore Lab. It supported, and was
- written in, an extended version of Pascal, designed to be a
- system-programming language. I added a C front end, and began porting
- it to the Motorola 68000 computer. But I had to give that up when I
- discovered that the compiler needed many megabytes of stack space, and
- the available 68000 Unix system would only allow 64k.
-
- I then realized that the Pastel compiler functioned by parsing the
- entire input file into a syntax tree, converting the whole syntax tree
- into a chain of "instructions", and then generating the whole output
- file, without ever freeing any storage. At this point, I concluded I
- would have to write a new compiler from scratch. That new compiler is
- now known as GCC; none of the Pastel compiler is used in it, but I
- managed to adapt and use the C front end that I had written. But that
- was some years later; first, I worked on GNU Emacs.
-
- GNU Emacs
-
- I began work on GNU Emacs in September 1984, and in early 1985 it was
- beginning to be usable. This enabled me to begin using Unix systems to
- do editing; having no interest in learning to use vi or ed, I had done
- my editing on other kinds of machines until then.
-
- At this point, people began wanting to use GNU Emacs, which raised the
- question of how to distribute it. Of course, I put it on the anonymous
- ftp server on the MIT computer that I used. (This computer,
- prep.ai.mit.edu, thus became the principal GNU ftp distribution site;
- when it was decommissioned a few years later, we transferred the name
- to our new ftp server.) But at that time, many of the interested people
- were not on the Internet and could not get a copy by ftp. So the
- question was, what would I say to them?
-
- I could have said, "Find a friend who is on the net and who will make a
- copy for you." Or I could have done what I did with the original PDP-10
- Emacs: tell them, "Mail me a tape and a SASE, and I will mail it back
- with Emacs on it." But I had no job, and I was looking for ways to make
- money from free software. So I announced that I would mail a tape to
- whoever wanted one, for a fee of $150. In this way, I started a free
- software distribution business, the precursor of the companies that
- today distribute entire Linux-based GNU systems.
-
- Is a program free for every user?
-
- If a program is free software when it leaves the hands of its author,
- this does not necessarily mean it will be free software for everyone
- who has a copy of it. For example, public domain software (software
- that is not copyrighted) is free software; but anyone can make a
- proprietary modified version of it. Likewise, many free programs are
- copyrighted but distributed under simple permissive licenses which
- allow proprietary modified versions.
-
- The paradigmatic example of this problem is the X Window System.
- Developed at MIT, and released as free software with a permissive
- license, it was soon adopted by various computer companies. They added
- X to their proprietary Unix systems, in binary form only, and covered
- by the same nondisclosure agreement. These copies of X were no more
- free software than Unix was.
-
- The developers of the X Window System did not consider this a
- problem--they expected and intended this to happen. Their goal was not
- freedom, just "success", defined as "having many users." They did not
- care whether these users had freedom, only that they should be
- numerous.
-
- This led to a paradoxical situation where two different ways of
- counting the amount of freedom gave different answers to the question,
- "Is this program free?" If you judged based on the freedom provided by
- the distribution terms of the MIT release, you would say that X was
- free software. But if you measured the freedom of the average user of
- X, you would have to say it was proprietary software. Most X users were
- running the proprietary versions that came with Unix systems, not the
- free version.
-
- Copyleft and the GNU GPL
-
- The goal of GNU was to give users freedom, not just to be popular. So
- we needed to use distribution terms that would prevent GNU software
- from being turned into proprietary software. The method we use is
- called "copyleft".(1)
-
- Copyleft uses copyright law, but flips it over to serve the opposite of
- its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, it
- becomes a means of keeping software free.
-
- The central idea of copyleft is that we give everyone permission to run
- the program, copy the program, modify the program, and distribute
- modified versions--but not permission to add restrictions of their own.
- Thus, the crucial freedoms that define "free software" are guaranteed
- to everyone who has a copy; they become inalienable rights.
-
- For an effective copyleft, modified versions must also be free. This
- ensures that work based on ours becomes available to our community if
- it is published. When programmers who have jobs as programmers
- volunteer to improve GNU software, it is copyleft that prevents their
- employers from saying, "You can't share those changes, because we are
- going to use them to make our proprietary version of the program."
-
- The requirement that changes must be free is essential if we want to
- ensure freedom for every user of the program. The companies that
- privatized the X Window System usually made some changes to port it to
- their systems and hardware. These changes were small compared with the
- great extent of X, but they were not trivial. If making changes were an
- excuse to deny the users freedom, it would be easy for anyone to take
- advantage of the excuse.
-
- A related issue concerns combining a free program with non-free code.
- Such a combination would inevitably be non-free; whichever freedoms are
- lacking for the non-free part would be lacking for the whole as well.
- To permit such combinations would open a hole big enough to sink a
- ship. Therefore, a crucial requirement for copyleft is to plug this
- hole: anything added to or combined with a copylefted program must be
- such that the larger combined version is also free and copylefted.
-
- The specific implementation of copyleft that we use for most GNU
- software is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. We
- have other kinds of copyleft that are used in specific circumstances.
- GNU manuals are copylefted also, but use a much simpler kind of
- copyleft, because the complexity of the GNU GPL is not necessary for
- manuals.(2)
-
- (1) In 1984 or 1985, Don Hopkins (a very imaginative fellow) mailed me
- a letter. On the envelope he had written several amusing sayings,
- including this one: "Copyleft--all rights reversed." I used the word
- "copyleft" to name the distribution concept I was developing at the
- time.
-
- (2) We now use the GNU Free Documentation License for documentation.
-
- The Free Software Foundation
-
- As interest in using Emacs was growing, other people became involved in
- the GNU project, and we decided that it was time to seek funding once
- again. So in 1985 we created the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt
- charity for free software development. The FSF also took over the Emacs
- tape distribution business; later it extended this by adding other free
- software (both GNU and non-GNU) to the tape, and by selling free
- manuals as well.
-
- The FSF accepts donations, but most of its income has always come from
- sales--of copies of free software, and of other related services. Today
- it sells CD-ROMs of source code, CD-ROMs with binaries, nicely printed
- manuals (all with freedom to redistribute and modify), and Deluxe
- Distributions (where we build the whole collection of software for your
- choice of platform).
-
- Free Software Foundation employees have written and maintained a number
- of GNU software packages. Two notable ones are the C library and the
- shell. The GNU C library is what every program running on a GNU/Linux
- system uses to communicate with Linux. It was developed by a member of
- the Free Software Foundation staff, Roland McGrath. The shell used on
- most GNU/Linux systems is BASH, the Bourne Again Shell(1), which was
- developed by FSF employee Brian Fox.
-
- We funded development of these programs because the GNU project was not
- just about tools or a development environment. Our goal was a complete
- operating system, and these programs were needed for that goal.
-
- (1) "Bourne again Shell" is a joke on the name ``Bourne Shell'', which
- was the usual shell on Unix.
-
- Free software support
-
- The free software philosophy rejects a specific widespread business
- practice, but it is not against business. When businesses respect the
- users' freedom, we wish them success.
-
- Selling copies of Emacs demonstrates one kind of free software
- business. When the FSF took over that business, I needed another way to
- make a living. I found it in selling services relating to the free
- software I had developed. This included teaching, for subjects such as
- how to program GNU Emacs and how to customize GCC, and software
- development, mostly porting GCC to new platforms.
-
- Today each of these kinds of free software business is practiced by a
- number of corporations. Some distribute free software collections on
- CD-ROM; others sell support at levels ranging from answering user
- questions, to fixing bugs, to adding major new features. We are even
- beginning to see free software companies based on launching new free
- software products.
-
- Watch out, though--a number of companies that associate themselves with
- the term "open source" actually base their business on non-free
- software that works with free software. These are not free software
- companies, they are proprietary software companies whose products tempt
- users away from freedom. They call these "value added", which reflects
- the values they would like us to adopt: convenience above freedom. If
- we value freedom more, we should call them "freedom subtracted"
- products.
-
- Technical goals
-
- The principal goal of GNU was to be free software. Even if GNU had no
- technical advantage over Unix, it would have a social advantage,
- allowing users to cooperate, and an ethical advantage, respecting the
- user's freedom.
-
- But it was natural to apply the known standards of good practice to the
- work--for example, dynamically allocating data structures to avoid
- arbitrary fixed size limits, and handling all the possible 8-bit codes
- wherever that made sense.
-
- In addition, we rejected the Unix focus on small memory size, by
- deciding not to support 16-bit machines (it was clear that 32-bit
- machines would be the norm by the time the GNU system was finished),
- and to make no effort to reduce memory usage unless it exceeded a
- megabyte. In programs for which handling very large files was not
- crucial, we encouraged programmers to read an entire input file into
- core, then scan its contents without having to worry about I/O.
-
- These decisions enabled many GNU programs to surpass their Unix
- counterparts in reliability and speed.
-
- Donated computers
-
- As the GNU project's reputation grew, people began offering to donate
- machines running UNIX to the project. These were very useful, because
- the easiest way to develop components of GNU was to do it on a UNIX
- system, and replace the components of that system one by one. But they
- raised an ethical issue: whether it was right for us to have a copy of
- UNIX at all.
-
- UNIX was (and is) proprietary software, and the GNU project's
- philosophy said that we should not use proprietary software. But,
- applying the same reasoning that leads to the conclusion that violence
- in self defense is justified, I concluded that it was legitimate to use
- a proprietary package when that was crucial for developing a free
- replacement that would help others stop using the proprietary package.
-
- But, even if this was a justifiable evil, it was still an evil. Today
- we no longer have any copies of Unix, because we have replaced them
- with free operating systems. If we could not replace a machine's
- operating system with a free one, we replaced the machine instead.
-
- The GNU Task List
-
- As the GNU project proceeded, and increasing numbers of system
- components were found or developed, eventually it became useful to make
- a list of the remaining gaps. We used it to recruit developers to write
- the missing pieces. This list became known as the GNU task list. In
- addition to missing Unix components, we listed added various other
- useful software and documentation projects that, we thought, a truly
- complete system ought to have.
-
- Today, hardly any Unix components are left in the GNU task list--those
- jobs have been done, aside from a few inessential ones. But the list is
- full of projects that some might call "applications". Any program that
- appeals to more than a narrow class of users would be a useful thing to
- add to an operating system.
-
- Even games are included in the task list--and have been since the
- beginning. Unix included games, so naturally GNU should too. But
- compatibility was not an issue for games, so we did not follow the list
- of games that Unix had. Instead, we listed a spectrum of different
- kinds of games that users might like.
-
- The GNU Library GPL
-
- The GNU C library uses a special kind of copyleft called the GNU
- Library General Public License(1), which gives permission to link
- proprietary software with the library. Why make this exception?
-
- It is not a matter of principle; there is no principle that says
- proprietary software products are entitled to include our code. (Why
- contribute to a project predicated on refusing to share with us?) Using
- the LGPL for the C library, or for any library, is a matter of
- strategy.
-
- The C library does a generic job; every proprietary system or compiler
- comes with a C library. Therefore, to make our C library available only
- to free software would not have given free software any advantage--it
- would only have discouraged use of our library.
-
- One system is an exception to this: on the GNU system (and this
- includes GNU/Linux), the GNU C library is the only C library. So the
- distribution terms of the GNU C library determine whether it is
- possible to compile a proprietary program for the GNU system. There is
- no ethical reason to allow proprietary applications on the GNU system,
- but strategically it seems that disallowing them would do more to
- discourage use of the GNU system than to encourage development of free
- applications.
-
- That is why using the Library GPL is a good strategy for the C library.
- For other libraries, the strategic decision needs to be considered on a
- case-by-case basis. When a library does a special job that can help
- write certain kinds of programs, then releasing it under the GPL,
- limiting it to free programs only, is a way of helping other free
- software developers, giving them an advantage against proprietary
- software.
-
- Consider GNU Readline, a library that was developed to provide
- command-line editing for BASH. Readline is released under the ordinary
- GNU GPL, not the Library GPL. This probably does reduce the amount
- Readline is used, but that is no loss for us. Meanwhile, at least one
- useful application has been made free software specifically so it could
- use Readline, and that is a real gain for the community.
-
- Proprietary software developers have the advantages money provides;
- free software developers need to make advantages for each other. I hope
- some day we will have a large collection of GPL-covered libraries that
- have no parallel available to proprietary software, providing useful
- modules to serve as building blocks in new free software, and adding up
- to a major advantage for further free software development.
-
- (1) This license is now called the GNU Lesser General Public License,
- to avoid giving the idea that all libraries ought to use it.
- See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html.
-
- Scratching an itch?
-
- Eric Raymond says that "Every good work of software starts by
- scratching a developer's personal itch." Maybe that happens sometimes,
- but many essential pieces of GNU software were developed in order to
- have a complete free operating system. They come from a vision and a
- plan, not from impulse.
-
- For example, we developed the GNU C library because a Unix-like system
- needs a C library, the Bourne-Again Shell (bash) because a Unix-like
- system needs a shell, and GNU tar because a Unix-like system needs a
- tar program. The same is true for my own programs--the GNU C compiler,
- GNU Emacs, GDB and GNU Make.
-
- Some GNU programs were developed to cope with specific threats to our
- freedom. Thus, we developed gzip to replace the Compress program, which
- had been lost to the community because of the LZW patents. We found
- people to develop LessTif, and more recently started GNOME and Harmony,
- to address the problems caused by certain proprietary libraries (see
- below). We are developing the GNU Privacy Guard to replace popular
- non-free encryption software, because users should not have to choose
- between privacy and freedom.
-
- Of course, the people writing these programs became interested in the
- work, and many features were added to them by various people for the
- sake of their own needs and interests. But that is not why the programs
- exist.
-
- Unexpected developments
-
- At the beginning of the GNU project, I imagined that we would develop
- the whole GNU system, then release it as a whole. That is not how it
- happened.
-
- Since each component of the GNU system was implemented on a Unix
- system, each component could run on Unix systems, long before a
- complete GNU system existed. Some of these programs became popular, and
- users began extending them and porting them---to the various
- incompatible versions of Unix, and sometimes to other systems as well.
-
- The process made these programs much more powerful, and attracted both
- funds and contributors to the GNU project. But it probably also delayed
- completion of a minimal working system by several years, as GNU
- developers' time was put into maintaining these ports and adding
- features to the existing components, rather than moving on to write one
- missing component after another.
-
- The GNU Hurd
-
- By 1990, the GNU system was almost complete; the only major missing
- component was the kernel. We had decided to implement our kernel as a
- collection of server processes running on top of Mach. Mach is a
- microkernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University and then at the
- University of Utah; the GNU HURD is a collection of servers (or ``herd
- of gnus'') that run on top of Mach, and do the various jobs of the Unix
- kernel. The start of development was delayed as we waited for Mach to
- be released as free software, as had been promised.
-
- One reason for choosing this design was to avoid what seemed to be the
- hardest part of the job: debugging a kernel program without a
- source-level debugger to do it with. This part of the job had been done
- already, in Mach, and we expected to debug the HURD servers as user
- programs, with GDB. But it took a long time to make that possible, and
- the multi-threaded servers that send messages to each other have turned
- out to be very hard to debug. Making the HURD work solidly has
- stretched on for many years.
-
- Alix
-
- The GNU kernel was not originally supposed to be called the HURD. Its
- original name was Alix--named after the woman who was my sweetheart at
- the time. She, a Unix system administrator, had pointed out how her
- name would fit a common naming pattern for Unix system versions; as a
- joke, she told her friends, "Someone should name a kernel after me." I
- said nothing, but decided to surprise her with a kernel named Alix.
-
- It did not stay that way. Michael Bushnell (now Thomas), the main
- developer of the kernel, preferred the name HURD, and redefined Alix to
- refer to a certain part of the kernel--the part that would trap system
- calls and handle them by sending messages to HURD servers.
-
- Ultimately, Alix and I broke up, and she changed her name;
- independently, the HURD design was changed so that the C library would
- send messages directly to servers, and this made the Alix component
- disappear from the design.
-
- But before these things happened, a friend of hers came across the name
- Alix in the HURD source code, and mentioned the name to her. So the
- name did its job.
-
- Linux and GNU/Linux
-
- The GNU Hurd is not ready for production use. Fortunately, another
- kernel is available. In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed a
- Unix-compatible kernel and called it Linux. Around 1992, combining
- Linux with the not-quite-complete GNU system resulted in a complete
- free operating system. (Combining them was a substantial job in itself,
- of course.) It is due to Linux that we can actually run a version of
- the GNU system today.
-
- We call this system version GNU/Linux, to express its composition as a
- combination of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel.
-
- Challenges in our future
-
- We have proved our ability to develop a broad spectrum of free
- software. This does not mean we are invincible and unstoppable. Several
- challenges make the future of free software uncertain; meeting them
- will require steadfast effort and endurance, sometimes lasting for
- years. It will require the kind of determination that people display
- when they value their freedom and will not let anyone take it away.
-
- The following four sections discuss these challenges.
-
- Secret hardware
-
- Hardware manufacturers increasingly tend to keep hardware
- specifications secret. This makes it difficult to write free drivers so
- that Linux and XFree86 can support new hardware. We have complete free
- systems today, but we will not have them tomorrow if we cannot support
- tomorrow's computers.
-
- There are two ways to cope with this problem. Programmers can do
- reverse engineering to figure out how to support the hardware. The rest
- of us can choose the hardware that is supported by free software; as
- our numbers increase, secrecy of specifications will become a
- self-defeating policy.
-
- Reverse engineering is a big job; will we have programmers with
- sufficient determination to undertake it? Yes--if we have built up a
- strong feeling that free software is a matter of principle, and
- non-free drivers are intolerable. And will large numbers of us spend
- extra money, or even a little extra time, so we can use free drivers?
- Yes, if the determination to have freedom is widespread.
-
- Non-free libraries
-
- A non-free library that runs on free operating systems acts as a trap
- for free software developers. The library's attractive features are the
- bait; if you use the library, you fall into the trap, because your
- program cannot usefully be part of a free operating system. (Strictly
- speaking, we could include your program, but it won't run with the
- library missing.) Even worse, if a program that uses the proprietary
- library becomes popular, it can lure other unsuspecting programmers
- into the trap.
-
- The first instance of this problem was the Motif toolkit, back in the
- 80s. Although there were as yet no free operating systems, it was clear
- what problem Motif would cause for them later on. The GNU Project
- responded in two ways: by asking individual free software projects to
- support the free X toolkit widgets as well as Motif, and by asking for
- someone to write a free replacement for Motif. The job took many years;
- LessTif, developed by the Hungry Programmers, became powerful enough to
- support most Motif applications only in 1997.
-
- Between 1996 and 1998, another non-free GUI toolkit library, called Qt,
- was used in a substantial collection of free software, the desktop KDE.
-
- Free GNU/Linux systems were unable to use KDE, because we could not use
- the library. However, some commercial distributors of GNU/Linux systems
- who were not strict about sticking with free software added KDE to
- their systems--producing a system with more capabilities, but less
- freedom. The KDE group was actively encouraging more programmers to use
- Qt, and millions of new "Linux users" had never been exposed to the
- idea that there was a problem in this. The situation appeared grim.
-
- The free software community responded to the problem in two ways: GNOME
- and Harmony.
-
- GNOME, the GNU Network Object Model Environment, is GNU's desktop
- project. Started in 1997 by Miguel de Icaza, and developed with the
- support of Red Hat Software, GNOME set out to provide similar desktop
- facilities, but using free software exclusively. It has technical
- advantages as well, such as supporting a variety of languages, not just
- C++. But its main purpose was freedom: not to require the use of any
- non-free software.
-
- Harmony is a compatible replacement library, designed to make it
- possible to run KDE software without using Qt.
-
- In November 1998, the developers of Qt announced a change of license
- which, when carried out, should make Qt free software. There is no way
- to be sure, but I think that this was partly due to the community's
- firm response to the problem that Qt posed when it was non-free. (The
- new license is inconvenient and inequitable, so it remains desirable to
- avoid using Qt.)
-
- [Subsequent note: in September 2000, Qt was rereleased under the GNU
- GPL, which essentially solved this problem.]
-
- How will we respond to the next tempting non-free library? Will the
- whole community understand the need to stay out of the trap? Or will
- many of us give up freedom for convenience, and produce a major
- problem? Our future depends on our philosophy.
-
- Software patents
-
- The worst threat we face comes from software patents, which can put
- algorithms and features off limits to free software for up to twenty
- years. The LZW compression algorithm patents were applied for in 1983,
- and we still cannot release free software to produce proper compressed
- GIFs. In 1998, a free program to produce MP3 compressed audio was
- removed from distribution under threat of a patent suit.
-
- There are ways to cope with patents: we can search for evidence that a
- patent is invalid, and we can look for alternative ways to do a job.
- But each of these methods works only sometimes; when both fail, a
- patent may force all free software to lack some feature that users
- want. What will we do when this happens?
-
- Those of us who value free software for freedom's sake will stay with
- free software anyway. We will manage to get work done without the
- patented features. But those who value free software because they
- expect it to be technically superior are likely to call it a failure
- when a patent holds it back. Thus, while it is useful to talk about the
- practical effectiveness of the "cathedral" model of development (1),
- and the reliability and power of some free software, we must not stop
- there. We must talk about freedom and principle.
-
- (1) It would have been clearer to write `of the "bazaar" model', since
- that was the alternative that was new and initially controversial.
-
- Free documentation
-
- The biggest deficiency in our free operating systems is not in the
- software--it is the lack of good free manuals that we can include in
- our systems. Documentation is an essential part of any software
- package; when an important free software package does not come with a
- good free manual, that is a major gap. We have many such gaps today.
-
- Free documentation, like free software, is a matter of freedom, not
- price. The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for
- free software: it is a matter of giving all users certain freedoms.
- Redistribution (including commercial sale) must be permitted, on-line
- and on paper, so that the manual can accompany every copy of the
- program.
-
- Permission for modification is crucial too. As a general rule, I don't
- believe that it is essential for people to have permission to modify
- all sorts of articles and books. For example, I don't think you or I
- are obliged to give permission to modify articles like this one, which
- describe our actions and our views.
-
- But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial
- for documentation for free software. When people exercise their right
- to modify the software, and add or change its features, if they are
- conscientious they will change the manual too--so they can provide
- accurate and usable documentation with the modified program. A manual
- which does not allow programmers to be conscientious and finish the
- job, does not fill our community's needs.
-
- Some kinds of limits on how modifications are done pose no problem. For
- example, requirements to preserve the original author's copyright
- notice, the distribution terms, or the list of authors, are ok. It is
- also no problem to require modified versions to include notice that
- they were modified, even to have entire sections that may not be
- deleted or changed, as long as these sections deal with nontechnical
- topics. These kinds of restrictions are not a problem because they
- don't stop the conscientious programmer from adapting the manual to fit
- the modified program. In other words, they don't block the free
- software community from making full use of the manual.
-
- However, it must be possible to modify all the *technical* content of
- the manual, and then distribute the result in all the usual media,
- through all the usual channels; otherwise, the restrictions do obstruct
- the community, the manual is not free, and we need another manual.
-
- Will free software developers have the awareness and determination to
- produce a full spectrum of free manuals? Once again, our future depends
- on philosophy.
-
- We must talk about freedom
-
- Estimates today are that there are ten million users of GNU/Linux
- systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and Red Hat Linux. Free software has
- developed such practical advantages that users are flocking to it for
- purely practical reasons.
-
- The good consequences of this are evident: more interest in developing
- free software, more customers for free software businesses, and more
- ability to encourage companies to develop commercial free software
- instead of proprietary software products.
-
- But interest in the software is growing faster than awareness of the
- philosophy it is based on, and this leads to trouble. Our ability to
- meet the challenges and threats described above depends on the will to
- stand firm for freedom. To make sure our community has this will, we
- need to spread the idea to the new users as they come into the
- community.
-
- But we are failing to do so: the efforts to attract new users into our
- community are far outstripping the efforts to teach them the civics of
- our community. We need to do both, and we need to keep the two efforts
- in balance.
-
- "Open Source"
-
- Teaching new users about freedom became more difficult in 1998, when a
- part of the community decided to stop using the term "free software"
- and say "open source software" instead.
-
- Some who favored this term aimed to avoid the confusion of "free" with
- "gratis"--a valid goal. Others, however, aimed to set aside the spirit
- of principle that had motivated the free software movement and the GNU
- project, and to appeal instead to executives and business users, many
- of whom hold an ideology that places profit above freedom, above
- community, above principle. Thus, the rhetoric of "open source" focuses
- on the potential to make high quality, powerful software, but shuns the
- ideas of freedom, community, and principle.
-
- The "Linux" magazines are a clear example of this--they are filled with
- advertisements for proprietary software that works with GNU/Linux. When
- the next Motif or Qt appears, will these magazines warn programmers to
- stay away from it, or will they run ads for it?
-
- The support of business can contribute to the community in many ways;
- all else being equal, it is useful. But winning their support by
- speaking even less about freedom and principle can be disastrous; it
- makes the previous imbalance between outreach and civics education even
- worse.
-
- "Free software" and "open source" describe the same category of
- software, more or less, but say different things about the software,
- and about values. The GNU Project continues to use the term "free
- software", to express the idea that freedom, not just technology, is
- important.
-
- Try!
-
- Yoda's philosophy ("There is no `try'") sounds neat, but it doesn't
- work for me. I have done most of my work while anxious about whether I
- could do the job, and unsure that it would be enough to achieve the
- goal if I did. But I tried anyway, because there was no one but me
- between the enemy and my city. Surprising myself, I have sometimes
- succeeded.
-
- Sometimes I failed; some of my cities have fallen. Then I found another
- threatened city, and got ready for another battle. Over time, I've
- learned to look for threats and put myself between them and my city,
- calling on other hackers to come and join me.
-
- Nowadays, often I'm not the only one. It is a relief and a joy when I
- see a regiment of hackers digging in to hold the line, and I realize,
- this city may survive--for now. But the dangers are greater each year,
- and now Microsoft has explicitly targeted our community. We can't take
- the future of freedom for granted. Don't take it for granted! If you
- want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it.
-
- Copyright (C) 1998 Richard Stallman
-
- Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted
- in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
+The GNU Project
+
+Note added March 2014:
+
+This file is obsolete and will be removed in future.
+Please update any references to use
+
+<http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html>
HCoop / bpt / emacs.git / blobdiff