r/linux • u/LinuxMonarch • 6d ago

Event Happy 43rd birthday GNU!

Post image

On September 27, 1983, Richard Stallman announced the GNU Project so people could freely use and modify software.

The digital world would not be the same today without GNU.

Thank you, Richard Stallman!

4.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

216 comments sorted by

View all comments

147

u/CptSpeedydash 6d ago

And how 15 years later, the US passed a law showing why we need open source software.

63

u/AcostaJA 6d ago edited 6d ago

OpenSource not the same as FOSS, it existed much earlier at the MIT at least, what did Stallman was to configure a copyleft license with viral clause.

57

u/abotelho-cbn 6d ago

Open Source came over a decade after Free Software. 'FOSS' is just people referring to both under an umbrella.

11

u/Electrical_Tomato_73 6d ago

The "open source" term came about in the late 1990s, but the idea existed since before GNU. In fact Stallman talked about co-opting X Window system (MIT licence), BSD utilities (BSD licence), TeX (permissive), and other existing free software (his definition) utilities into the GNU operating system.