GNU Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary – Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 30, 2023 @02:34PM from the join-us-now-and-share-the-software dept. Wednesday the Free Software Foundation celebrated “the 40th anniversary of the GNU operating system and the launch of the free software movement,” with an announcement calling it “a turning point in the history of computing. “Forty years later, GNU and free software are even more relevant. While software has become deeply ingrained into everyday life, the vast majority of users do not have full control over it… ” On September 27, 1983, a computer scientist named Richard Stallman announced the plan to develop a free software Unix-like operating system called GNU, for “GNU’s not Unix.” GNU is the only operating system developed specifically for the sake of users’ freedom, and has remained true to its founding ideals for forty years. Since 1983, the GNU Project has provided a full, ethical replacement for proprietary operating systems. This is thanks to the forty years of tireless work from volunteer GNU developers around the world. When describing GNU’s history and the background behind its initial announcement, Stallman (often known simply as “RMS”) stated, “with a free operating system, we could again have a community of cooperating hackers — and invite
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