One of RMS's motivations for GNU was frustration at a closed-source printer driver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Decline_of_MIT.27s_hacker_cult

One of RMS's motivations for GNU was frustration at a closed-source printer driver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Decline_of_MIT.27s_hacker_culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman#Decline_of_MIT...). Given the challenges involved (patents, proprietary protocols, programmer tools), you could view a quest to build the perfect printer as a microcosm of the Free Software movement.