14 ms·

Forty years of GNU and the free software movement

305 points by TMM2K 3y ago

TMM2K 3y ago
It's sometimes a little mind-boggling that the FSF has been around only a couple months more than I have been around. I'm not even sure I'd have made computing of any kind a career if it hadn't been for free software myself.
baudaux 3y ago
GNU bash, GNU ed, GNU chess, GNU coreutils, GNU hello are now in https://www.exaequOS.com https://www.exaequOS.com
- ForOldHack 3y ago
  GNU chess? Beat everything else we had for pcs. Wrecked them. Beat the pants off us.
  - baudaux 3y ago
    GNU Chess 6.2.9 (latest) is very strong, even compiled in WebAssembly. Around 2500 ELO
throwaway7679 3y ago
Forty years and printers are still as treacherous as ever.
- maccard 3y ago
  That's what happens when you lose sight of the original goal. A real pivot!
- TMM2K 3y ago
  The next revolution in software will probably ALSO be caused by an aggravating printer :P
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  They are much worse than they were forty years ago.
- Fnoord 3y ago
  Inkjet, yes. But laser?
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    HP, yes, but Brother?
noufalibrahim 3y ago
My earliest exposure to free software was via. GCC and Emacs. The early debates on Gnu/Linux, OSS vs. Free Software etc. were all things I imbibed back then. The ideological stand of the FSF was appealing to me when I was younger and really affected my outlook. Over the years, I can't help but feeling that while the FSF's core message is still relevant and true, their tactics have more or less pushed them outside of the mainstream conversation on technology. This is a tragedy and I'm not sure what lessons to draw from this but I would have liked to see a larger role for the FSF in the modern tech. discourse.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  There is free as in apache/BSD/MIT, and free as in GPL. In many parts of industry, going the "purist" route and putting your library under GPL is a sure way to make sure no-one will use it (the LGPL doesn't completely solve this problem either). Whereas more pragmatic approaches to free software have absolutely taken off. Big names like React, Angular etc. are MIT licensed, for example. It's like the FSF invented "free 1.0", and then others came along with "free 2.0" and it's a genuine improvement. The difference here is very much one that strikes at the FSF's core message.
  - orthoxerox 3y ago
    And now we're moving to "free 3.0" (aka screw you Amazon), which is more restrictive than MIT or GPL.
    - pipo234 3y ago
      There are a lot of issues with FSF's perspective and the way they were written down. Running GNU derivative in a proprietary cloud is one of them. RedHat (in)ability to make a fair profit is another. Still Google's Linux "theft" led to more openness in Android than Apple's BSD Unix rip off. Regardless of the license chosen, sustainability of open source is a problem. (I'm still baffled by the absence of government sponsoring; why do governments around the globe continue to spend billions on proprietary IT infrastructure, databases, and desktop computers?!) Not sure if yet another license is the answer, but yes we could do with a new model of what "free" and openness entails.
red_admiral 3y ago
I have mixed feelings about this anniversary. RMS is both the reason that the free software movement is where it is today, and the reason that it has so few women involved. If we could turn back the clock, I wish we could keep the good parts but leave out the bad parts.
- emilsedgh 3y ago
  the reason that it has so few women involved Citation needed here. Free Software movement at this point is much, much larger than FSF, GNU and rms. Many of those communities (Like KDE which I've been involved with) have been very very welcoming and inclusive to woman. However, woman have always been under-represented there just like many other areas in Tech. Not saying rms has not made GNU/FSF difficult for woman though. Just saying the reasons woman are under-represented go deeper than rms.
  - red_admiral 3y ago
    > Citation needed FLOSSPOLS 2004-05 found that "proprietary software" was around 28% female, whereas "free software" was around 1.5% female. A presentatation of the results can be found at [1]. I agree with you that FOSS is much larger than GNU/FSF, and that many places are actively welcoming to women - the linked slides reference Debian's efforts; the python community also seems to be fairly good at this. [1] https://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/talks/flosspols.pdf https://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/talks/flosspols.pdf
    - globular-toast 3y ago
      Do you really think all those women in proprietary software jobs aren't doing free software because of one man? They probably haven't even heard of him. There are many more obvious reasons for the disparity that don't involve anything malicious let alone singling out one person and attaching the blame. Anybody can make meaningful contributions to free software. Nobody has to interact with RMS or anybody else. I've made many anonymous and pseudonymous contributions just fine. Given that there are essentially no barriers to entry to developing free software but there are significant barriers to being paid for it, I wonder why proprietary software is only 72% male when free software is 98.5% male. Are there any other fields that exhibit this disparity? Are there more/less paid male/female car mechanics versus car enthusiasts/hobbyists, for example?
p-e-w 3y ago
If by some sequence of miracles society manages to avoid the seemingly inevitable slide into a techno-totalitarian future, there is no doubt that Free Software will be what makes that possible. I consider it quite likely that Stallman and Torvalds will eventually be viewed as two of the most influential individuals in human history, at least on par with Marx and Engels, but arguably even more important, provided their foundational contributions actually end up turning the tide.
- aerhq3h5 3y ago
  Without meaning to be overly pessimistic, why would it be so certain that such salvation would come from GNU and the free software movement? The most common operating system in peoples' day-to-day computers is Android which is effectively Linux without GNU bundled in.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    And even the Linux kernel might one day be changed for Zirkon.
    - riffraff 3y ago
      didn't google all-but-abandon Fuchsia's development (and thus Zircon)? There was a bunch of lay-offs in January, in July they announced the smart speakers would not use it, and AFAIU the only product using it (the Nest Hub) is supposed to be replaced by the Pixel Tablet.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Not sure, at least officially, Fuschia is still going. https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wip https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wi...
  - the-dude 3y ago
    I think it is fair to say that without the GPL and GNU, there would have been no Linux as we know it today.
Osmose 3y ago
40 years on and they still seem to think giving talks and making free software is a suitable defense of Free Software. It's passive, and has fallen apart in the face of tech companies that actively use their free software tools to make closed source software that routinely violates user's rights. There's so much they _could_ be doing. Where's the grant program for startups working on free software? Where's their shop reselling used computer hardware with free software preinstalled, with discounts for low-income communities or libraries? Where's their work with labor unions in tech[1]? The FSF never adapted once thought leading and making free alternatives stopped being enough to support the ideals of their movement. They just kinda exist now. [1] Workers' rights may seem orthogonal to user's rights for software, but the power imbalance between workers and the companies they work for is deeply tied in with why companies can demand their workers product software that doesn't respect user's rights, and there's interesting work that could be done here in the long term.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Yeah, I think the FSF and GNU are resting on their laurels and barely relevant. So one of the core things for the FSF has been the GNU tools. Recently it's become trendy to rewrite stuff in Rust, and overall it seems like an excellent idea to have the core tooling of an OS being much harder to exploit, and often much more performant. For instance ripgrep is a nice improvement on the classical grep, nushell is a better shell, exa is a better ls, and none of those is under the GPL. There's also a project to do a straightforward rewrite of coreutils in Rust, and that is MIT licensed. Where's the FSF's effort to modernize things and remain relevant?
  - mbakke 3y ago
    I think the FSFE (Europe) is doing a lot better than its American sister foundation, with active involvement in EU politics, running campaigns, etc. Individual GNU projects are doing fairly well on the technical side (toolchain, Emacs, Guix, Mes), but there is little to no coordination across GNU, much less with the FSFs. FSF Asia seems to have fallen off the earth, even though India appears to have a fairly active free software movement. I don't think rewrite in Rust is a solution to "modernize" GNU tools. Maybe another memory safe language, but Rust has severe bootstrapping issues which is a hard sell for distros that care about source to binary transparency.
nologic01 3y ago
Its easy to drift into lamenting how the vision of the original free software movement was lost. This would be missing the growing forest (the widespread adoption of open and collaborative modes of software production) for a singular tree (a specific ideology about the role of computing). What has been happening in these four decades is that ever more segments of society (whether individuals or private enterprise or public sector) got into this mode of using and developing a shared resource (a common good). This is just an unprecedented positive development that gets lost among the avalanche of bad news. I can't think of anything remotely comparable in any other domain. We need to celebrate this more. Now, of-course when something succeeds to grow beyond childhood it may evolve beyond recognition. A mass adopted religion might be quite different from the original prophet's visionary preaching. It may split into lots of heresies. These heresies might become more popular than the "orthodoxy". There is simply no way to avoid money and politics when something becomes mainstream. Imho, the challenge today is not to rekindle some pure and true faith but have leaders of equal clarity of vision and purpose that will champion the underlying cause in new and specific contexts that are becoming relevant as the movement expands. The corporate world outside big tech is still largely absent from open source. Digital public goods from public entities still nascent even though they are extremely congruent with the philosophy.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Yes indeed. The alternative timeline - Windows on nearly all servers and desktops. All software purchased from ISV and closed source. Bugs galore that never get fixed because they have you locked in. Crappy software due to lack of competition.
  - econorew 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      Webapps are just as bad as a licensed binary blob on your desktop. If not worse since they usually spy on you and you can't firewall them. Edit: Oh. Read you wrong. Nevermind.
ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago
I'd like just to say thanks for all the longstanding efforts of FSF and GNU. While one could debate minutiae to oblivion, it's hard to dismiss the core ideas, particularly in light of the continuous stream of facts and events that unequivocally validate the very real threats and maliciousness that this movement stands against. Free Software in general contributes significantly to keeping the environment I live in more trustworthy, friendlier, and less threatening. That's no small feat and I can only express my sincere gratitude to everyone involved.
- ta8645 3y ago
  > I'd like just to say thanks for all the longstanding efforts of FSF and GNU. I'd like to extend your thanks, by explicitly thanking Richard Stallman for his important role in creating both those organizations. The man deserves a lot of praise and respect.
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    > The man deserves a lot of praise and respect. No, he really doesn't. - https://youtu.be/R2SKenHRhMg https://youtu.be/R2SKenHRhMg - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman-returns-to-fsf-18-months-after-controversial-rape-comments/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman...
    - npteljes 3y ago
      Just extend the saying with "for this". "The man deserves a lot of praise and respect for this." This is also how parents are supposed to raise the children too, not judging the person, but the actions. And I think we need that kind of feedback later in life too, not just in childhood.
parasti 3y ago
I honestly believe that proliferation of permissive non-copyleft open source licensing is what has harmed the free software movement the most. GPL used to be standard, but it's long been overtaken by short, easy to understand, do what you want licenses.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  It doesn't help that you have people like the CEO of github having a keynote saying to use MIT license. It has all been a concerted effort to convince people that to be relevant they needed to use MIT license (so that they could be taken advantage of).
  - phkahler 3y ago
    >> It doesn't help that you have people like the CEO of github having a keynote saying to use MIT license. Really? Github? Owned by Microsoft right? I wonder why they like MIT licenses....
    - LtWorf 3y ago
      I think it was before that https://youtu.be/-bAAlPXB2-c?t=178 https://youtu.be/-bAAlPXB2-c?t=178
antipurist 3y ago
I’m glad that the free software movement existed for so long and achieved a lot, giving me the opportunity to reap the benefits of their work. And that’s exactly what disappoints me: everyone can benefit without giving anything in return. FSF didn’t find an approach to software freedom that incentivises participants to contribute. FOSS is not a business model, so we see what we see: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ I believe there is a need to adopt more semi-free source-available licenses that will force corporations to finance the projects they rely upon, while granting the expected freedoms to individual users, tinkerers and contributors.
remix2000 3y ago
Ah yes, GNU, my favorite vaporware.
nairboon 3y ago
Given the age of the field and the short half-life nowadays of many software, the GNU project is a huge accomplishment!
npteljes 3y ago
I'm especially grateful for the GPL license family, for legally establishing the ideology that people need to give back. I firmly believe that it's partly why the different open source movements are as successful as they are, and to find such thing as a license like this embedded deep in the culture gave a lot of inspiration and appreciation to me.
IYasha 3y ago
Free as in "Freedom". Big shoutout to everyone working in FSF! You make the computing world a byte less terrible :)

305 points by TMM2K 3y ago

It's sometimes a little mind-boggling that the FSF has been around only a couple months more than I have been around. I'm not even sure I'd have made computing of any kind a career if it hadn't been for free software myself.

baudaux 3y ago

GNU bash, GNU ed, GNU chess, GNU coreutils, GNU hello are now in https://www.exaequOS.com https://www.exaequOS.com

ForOldHack 3y ago
GNU chess? Beat everything else we had for pcs. Wrecked them. Beat the pants off us.
- baudaux 3y ago
  GNU Chess 6.2.9 (latest) is very strong, even compiled in WebAssembly. Around 2500 ELO

throwaway7679 3y ago

Forty years and printers are still as treacherous as ever.

maccard 3y ago
That's what happens when you lose sight of the original goal. A real pivot!
TMM2K 3y ago
The next revolution in software will probably ALSO be caused by an aggravating printer :P
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
They are much worse than they were forty years ago.
Fnoord 3y ago
Inkjet, yes. But laser?
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  HP, yes, but Brother?

noufalibrahim 3y ago

My earliest exposure to free software was via. GCC and Emacs. The early debates on Gnu/Linux, OSS vs. Free Software etc. were all things I imbibed back then. The ideological stand of the FSF was appealing to me when I was younger and really affected my outlook. Over the years, I can't help but feeling that while the FSF's core message is still relevant and true, their tactics have more or less pushed them outside of the mainstream conversation on technology. This is a tragedy and I'm not sure what lessons to draw from this but I would have liked to see a larger role for the FSF in the modern tech. discourse.

red_admiral 3y ago
There is free as in apache/BSD/MIT, and free as in GPL. In many parts of industry, going the "purist" route and putting your library under GPL is a sure way to make sure no-one will use it (the LGPL doesn't completely solve this problem either). Whereas more pragmatic approaches to free software have absolutely taken off. Big names like React, Angular etc. are MIT licensed, for example. It's like the FSF invented "free 1.0", and then others came along with "free 2.0" and it's a genuine improvement. The difference here is very much one that strikes at the FSF's core message.
- orthoxerox 3y ago
  And now we're moving to "free 3.0" (aka screw you Amazon), which is more restrictive than MIT or GPL.
  - pipo234 3y ago
    There are a lot of issues with FSF's perspective and the way they were written down. Running GNU derivative in a proprietary cloud is one of them. RedHat (in)ability to make a fair profit is another. Still Google's Linux "theft" led to more openness in Android than Apple's BSD Unix rip off. Regardless of the license chosen, sustainability of open source is a problem. (I'm still baffled by the absence of government sponsoring; why do governments around the globe continue to spend billions on proprietary IT infrastructure, databases, and desktop computers?!) Not sure if yet another license is the answer, but yes we could do with a new model of what "free" and openness entails.

red_admiral 3y ago

I have mixed feelings about this anniversary. RMS is both the reason that the free software movement is where it is today, and the reason that it has so few women involved. If we could turn back the clock, I wish we could keep the good parts but leave out the bad parts.

emilsedgh 3y ago
the reason that it has so few women involved Citation needed here. Free Software movement at this point is much, much larger than FSF, GNU and rms. Many of those communities (Like KDE which I've been involved with) have been very very welcoming and inclusive to woman. However, woman have always been under-represented there just like many other areas in Tech. Not saying rms has not made GNU/FSF difficult for woman though. Just saying the reasons woman are under-represented go deeper than rms.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  > Citation needed FLOSSPOLS 2004-05 found that "proprietary software" was around 28% female, whereas "free software" was around 1.5% female. A presentatation of the results can be found at [1]. I agree with you that FOSS is much larger than GNU/FSF, and that many places are actively welcoming to women - the linked slides reference Debian's efforts; the python community also seems to be fairly good at this. [1] https://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/talks/flosspols.pdf https://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/talks/flosspols.pdf
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    Do you really think all those women in proprietary software jobs aren't doing free software because of one man? They probably haven't even heard of him. There are many more obvious reasons for the disparity that don't involve anything malicious let alone singling out one person and attaching the blame. Anybody can make meaningful contributions to free software. Nobody has to interact with RMS or anybody else. I've made many anonymous and pseudonymous contributions just fine. Given that there are essentially no barriers to entry to developing free software but there are significant barriers to being paid for it, I wonder why proprietary software is only 72% male when free software is 98.5% male. Are there any other fields that exhibit this disparity? Are there more/less paid male/female car mechanics versus car enthusiasts/hobbyists, for example?

p-e-w 3y ago

If by some sequence of miracles society manages to avoid the seemingly inevitable slide into a techno-totalitarian future, there is no doubt that Free Software will be what makes that possible. I consider it quite likely that Stallman and Torvalds will eventually be viewed as two of the most influential individuals in human history, at least on par with Marx and Engels, but arguably even more important, provided their foundational contributions actually end up turning the tide.

aerhq3h5 3y ago
Without meaning to be overly pessimistic, why would it be so certain that such salvation would come from GNU and the free software movement? The most common operating system in peoples' day-to-day computers is Android which is effectively Linux without GNU bundled in.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  And even the Linux kernel might one day be changed for Zirkon.
  - riffraff 3y ago
    didn't google all-but-abandon Fuchsia's development (and thus Zircon)? There was a bunch of lay-offs in January, in July they announced the smart speakers would not use it, and AFAIU the only product using it (the Nest Hub) is supposed to be replaced by the Pixel Tablet.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Not sure, at least officially, Fuschia is still going. https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wip https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wi...
- the-dude 3y ago
  I think it is fair to say that without the GPL and GNU, there would have been no Linux as we know it today.

Osmose 3y ago

40 years on and they still seem to think giving talks and making free software is a suitable defense of Free Software. It's passive, and has fallen apart in the face of tech companies that actively use their free software tools to make closed source software that routinely violates user's rights. There's so much they _could_ be doing. Where's the grant program for startups working on free software? Where's their shop reselling used computer hardware with free software preinstalled, with discounts for low-income communities or libraries? Where's their work with labor unions in tech[1]? The FSF never adapted once thought leading and making free alternatives stopped being enough to support the ideals of their movement. They just kinda exist now. [1] Workers' rights may seem orthogonal to user's rights for software, but the power imbalance between workers and the companies they work for is deeply tied in with why companies can demand their workers product software that doesn't respect user's rights, and there's interesting work that could be done here in the long term.

dale_glass 3y ago
Yeah, I think the FSF and GNU are resting on their laurels and barely relevant. So one of the core things for the FSF has been the GNU tools. Recently it's become trendy to rewrite stuff in Rust, and overall it seems like an excellent idea to have the core tooling of an OS being much harder to exploit, and often much more performant. For instance ripgrep is a nice improvement on the classical grep, nushell is a better shell, exa is a better ls, and none of those is under the GPL. There's also a project to do a straightforward rewrite of coreutils in Rust, and that is MIT licensed. Where's the FSF's effort to modernize things and remain relevant?
- mbakke 3y ago
  I think the FSFE (Europe) is doing a lot better than its American sister foundation, with active involvement in EU politics, running campaigns, etc. Individual GNU projects are doing fairly well on the technical side (toolchain, Emacs, Guix, Mes), but there is little to no coordination across GNU, much less with the FSFs. FSF Asia seems to have fallen off the earth, even though India appears to have a fairly active free software movement. I don't think rewrite in Rust is a solution to "modernize" GNU tools. Maybe another memory safe language, but Rust has severe bootstrapping issues which is a hard sell for distros that care about source to binary transparency.

nologic01 3y ago

Its easy to drift into lamenting how the vision of the original free software movement was lost. This would be missing the growing forest (the widespread adoption of open and collaborative modes of software production) for a singular tree (a specific ideology about the role of computing). What has been happening in these four decades is that ever more segments of society (whether individuals or private enterprise or public sector) got into this mode of using and developing a shared resource (a common good). This is just an unprecedented positive development that gets lost among the avalanche of bad news. I can't think of anything remotely comparable in any other domain. We need to celebrate this more. Now, of-course when something succeeds to grow beyond childhood it may evolve beyond recognition. A mass adopted religion might be quite different from the original prophet's visionary preaching. It may split into lots of heresies. These heresies might become more popular than the "orthodoxy". There is simply no way to avoid money and politics when something becomes mainstream. Imho, the challenge today is not to rekindle some pure and true faith but have leaders of equal clarity of vision and purpose that will champion the underlying cause in new and specific contexts that are becoming relevant as the movement expands. The corporate world outside big tech is still largely absent from open source. Digital public goods from public entities still nascent even though they are extremely congruent with the philosophy.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Yes indeed. The alternative timeline - Windows on nearly all servers and desktops. All software purchased from ISV and closed source. Bugs galore that never get fixed because they have you locked in. Crappy software due to lack of competition.
- econorew 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Webapps are just as bad as a licensed binary blob on your desktop. If not worse since they usually spy on you and you can't firewall them. Edit: Oh. Read you wrong. Nevermind.

ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago

I'd like just to say thanks for all the longstanding efforts of FSF and GNU. While one could debate minutiae to oblivion, it's hard to dismiss the core ideas, particularly in light of the continuous stream of facts and events that unequivocally validate the very real threats and maliciousness that this movement stands against. Free Software in general contributes significantly to keeping the environment I live in more trustworthy, friendlier, and less threatening. That's no small feat and I can only express my sincere gratitude to everyone involved.

ta8645 3y ago
> I'd like just to say thanks for all the longstanding efforts of FSF and GNU. I'd like to extend your thanks, by explicitly thanking Richard Stallman for his important role in creating both those organizations. The man deserves a lot of praise and respect.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  > The man deserves a lot of praise and respect. No, he really doesn't. - https://youtu.be/R2SKenHRhMg https://youtu.be/R2SKenHRhMg - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman-returns-to-fsf-18-months-after-controversial-rape-comments/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/richard-stallman...
  - npteljes 3y ago
    Just extend the saying with "for this". "The man deserves a lot of praise and respect for this." This is also how parents are supposed to raise the children too, not judging the person, but the actions. And I think we need that kind of feedback later in life too, not just in childhood.

parasti 3y ago

I honestly believe that proliferation of permissive non-copyleft open source licensing is what has harmed the free software movement the most. GPL used to be standard, but it's long been overtaken by short, easy to understand, do what you want licenses.

LtWorf 3y ago
It doesn't help that you have people like the CEO of github having a keynote saying to use MIT license. It has all been a concerted effort to convince people that to be relevant they needed to use MIT license (so that they could be taken advantage of).
- phkahler 3y ago
  >> It doesn't help that you have people like the CEO of github having a keynote saying to use MIT license. Really? Github? Owned by Microsoft right? I wonder why they like MIT licenses....
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    I think it was before that https://youtu.be/-bAAlPXB2-c?t=178 https://youtu.be/-bAAlPXB2-c?t=178

antipurist 3y ago

I’m glad that the free software movement existed for so long and achieved a lot, giving me the opportunity to reap the benefits of their work. And that’s exactly what disappoints me: everyone can benefit without giving anything in return. FSF didn’t find an approach to software freedom that incentivises participants to contribute. FOSS is not a business model, so we see what we see: https://xkcd.com/2347/ https://xkcd.com/2347/ I believe there is a need to adopt more semi-free source-available licenses that will force corporations to finance the projects they rely upon, while granting the expected freedoms to individual users, tinkerers and contributors.

remix2000 3y ago

Ah yes, GNU, my favorite vaporware.

nairboon 3y ago

Given the age of the field and the short half-life nowadays of many software, the GNU project is a huge accomplishment!

npteljes 3y ago

I'm especially grateful for the GPL license family, for legally establishing the ideology that people need to give back. I firmly believe that it's partly why the different open source movements are as successful as they are, and to find such thing as a license like this embedded deep in the culture gave a lot of inspiration and appreciation to me.

IYasha 3y ago

Free as in "Freedom". Big shoutout to everyone working in FSF! You make the computing world a byte less terrible :)