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GNU is Not Unix, but it is 25


By Alex Handy
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February 15, 2009 —  (Page 1 of 4)
In the earliest days of computers, just about everything could be considered free software. Computers were so large, unwieldy and difficult to understand that any reasonably well-written program would be passed around via punch cards or paper tape. Into that free software world Richard Stallman was born.

In the 1960s, he programmed IBM System/360 mainframes in PL/I, a procedural language that itself is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. In the 1970s, Stallman worked at the famous MIT Artificial Intelligence laboratory. Along the way, he saw software developers change their attitudes and move away from openness toward the proprietary. It was this shift in the hacker culture, as he called it, that eventually led him to strike out on his own in 1983.

“In the 70s, operating systems mostly became proprietary,” said Stallman. “I was working in a sort of island where a more ethical and cooperative way of life still existed; namely the AI lab at MIT. We had an OS that was entirely free software. But then that community died in the early 80s.”

During that time, a company called Symbolics built proprietary LISP systems, combining both hardware and software. Stallman saw this closed-source approach as the antithesis to his desires for free software.

“I spent a couple of years punishing Symbolics by attacking it and giving an ultimatum to the people at the AI lab," he said. "I didn't want to spend the rest of my life punishing somebody. I wanted to rebuild what was destroyed. I wanted to be able to use computers while having freedom. This is impossible if you have a proprietary program.”

So Stallman spent most of 1984 writing a free operating system. He named this body of work with a recursive acronym: GNU, meaning GNU is Not Unix. He began by modifying a compiler called Pastel, but soon found it lacking and rewrote it from scratch; this later became the foundation of the GNU Compiler Collection, or the gcc. Next, he reworked the Gosling Emacs text editor, eventually replacing all of its code with LISP. This would become Stallman's first piece of free software: GNU Emacs.



Related Search Term(s): GNU, GPL, open source, Unix

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Comments


02/15/2009 04:50:09 PM EST

Happy Birthday GNU and thank you Mr. Stallman!

United StatesTodd R. Gailfoil


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