Happy birthday to GNU!


CCau is very proud to wish our free culture brothers across at GNU a very happy 25th birthday.

25 years ago today (ok, so it was yesterday - but it's still 2 September in most parts of the world) Richard Stallman and his collaborators began a project to develop an operating system that could be legally used, improved on and tinkered with by programmers everywhere. In doing so, they pretty much invented the free software movement. Which in turn led to open content licensing, the free culture movement, and Creative Commons.

Software from GNU ("Gnu is Not Unix") now powers everything from Apple OS X to the Firefox web browser to the software behind internet itself. Their social influence has, perhaps, been even greater, encouraging us all to rethink what 'ownership' means, and what rights we should have over our own culture.

So we join British comedian Stephen Fry and the rest of the CC community in wishing GNU 25 more years of setting the standards for freedom everywhere. And another 25 after that. And another.


Freedom Fry — "Happy birthday to GNU" by the Free Software Foundation Inc and The Sampsonian Company. Creative Commons License
.