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GNU is Not Unix, but it is 25

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 10 comments
SD Times; By Alex Handy 		Mail this story
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In the earliest days of computers, just about everything could be considered free software. Computers were so large, unwieldy and difficult to understand that any reasonably well-written program would be passed around via punch cards or paper tape. Into that free software world Richard Stallman was born. In the 1960s, he programmed IBM System/360 mainframes in PL/I, a procedural language that itself is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. In the 1970s, Stallman worked at the famous MIT Artificial Intelligence laboratory. Along the way, he saw software developers change their attitudes and move away from openness toward the proprietary. It was this shift in the hacker culture, as he called it, that eventually led him to strike out on his own in 1983.

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Comments (10)

tuxchick ·
Hurrah for RMS, and I am having pie and ice cream to celebrate!

OK so I was going to have pie and ice cream anyway. This just makes it an official occasion :)
ColonelPanik ·
What kind of pie? Pumpkin? I love pumpkin.
tuxchick ·
Delicious peach pie, courtesty of Marie Callendar, with excellent vanilla bean ice cream by Umpqua.
azerthoth ·
Well, one thing for certain, with RMS involved it certainly isnt humble pie.
Scott_Ruecker Story submitter ·
Good one azer..I scared the cat with the laugh that gave me.
gus3 ·
And for the proprietary lock-in contenders, we have a big bowl of raspberries.
tracyanne ·
I'm celebrating by staying in bed all day..... Actually I'm sick, I have the dredded lurgie. I'm not allowed out of bed, so I have to do this from my jail broken iPhone.
ColonelPanik ·
lurgie? Oh wow not the lurgie.

Can anyone put that into English?
Scott_Ruecker Story submitter ·
From my understanding, a bad bad cold or case of the flu, like a summer cold would be called in the States I think..
jdixon ·
> ...a bad bad cold or case of the flu...

Look on the bright side, at least she's not burning up.

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