Richard Stallman has published an essay about the meaning of free software, today, on the 20th anniversary of his decision to quit his job at MIT to focus on creating “GNUs Not Unix” (GNU), a free Unix-like operating system.

Stallman went on to write the GNU C compiler (gcc), Emacs (editor macros), and more, but his most important creation is probably the GNU General Public License (GPL), the license under which the Linux kernel and many other open source software projects are released.

As most people today are aware, the Linux kernel would not have been usable at all, when it first emerged, without the GNU Project's compiler and C library. Today, the GNU Project continues to make huge contributions (the GNU Software Directory presently counts 2,690 projects), and Stallman continues his efforts to serve as a moral compass for the Free Software community.

Read Stallman's essay

 
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