the-gnu-project

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  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 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