wxie2017

GNU and Free Software

Dear Fellow members, Distinguished guests,

Good morning.

I have talked about Free Software twice in our club meeting. Today I want to share more on this topic.

  • Let’s look at some examples

Questions: which of the following software is free software? (show the presentation)

  1. Wechat (the message program by Tencent)

  2. MS Excel (an office tool for calculation)

  3. Firefox (a web browser)

  4. GNU Emacs (an extensible text editor and more)

According to the definition of free software:

Freedom 0: free to run the program as you wish

Freedom 1: free to study the program and make changes as you wish

Freedom 2: free to distribute the original program

Freedom 3: free to distribute modified version of the program

We know that program 1 and 2 are not free software, please think about the reason. You may not be familiar with program 3 (Firefox) or program 4 (GNU Emacs), but they are free software. They give the users the 4 freedoms.

You many noticed that in program 4, there is a “GNU” before Emacs. You may wonder:

  • What’s GNU?

Does anybody know about Unix? Good.

Unix is an operation system just like Windows. GNU mean GNU’s Not Unix! Do you see the humor in it? The name of the system, GNU, is a recursive acronym —a way of paying tribute to the technical ideas of Unix, while at the same time saying that GNU is something different.

GNU was launched by Richard Stallman (rms) in 1983, as an operating system which would be put together by people working together for the freedom of all software users to control their computing. rms remains the Chief GNUisance today. He is still in charge of the GNU project.

The primary and continuing goal of GNU is to offer a Unix-compatible system that would be 100% free software. Not 95% free, not 99.5%, but 100%. Technically, GNU is like Unix. But unlike Unix, GNU gives its users freedom.

  • The birth of GNU means the start of free software movement.

The project to develop GNU system is called GNU project, which started in January 1984. The Free Software Foundation was founded in October 1985, initially to raise funds to help develop GNU. 2020 is the 35th anniversary of Free Software Foundation.

We know 25th anniversary is called silver, 50th anniversary is called gold. Who knows what is the name for 35th anniversary?

Yes. It is called coral. So 2020 is the coral anniversary of FSF.

Today, tens of millions of people now use GNU/Linux systems, a free operating system from GNU and free software community. How far can free software go? There are no limits.

After 35 years, in many ways, free software is only just getting started, as the technological landscape endlessly shifts and new threats – and opportunities – emerge. The free software community pledge to match all the commitment, along with all of the hard work, there is plenty of joy and fun to be had along the way to the goal: a world where all software is free, forever.

Thanks to GNU and thanks to free software.

Thank you.