To a GNU Free-Flowing (not) UNIX
In 1984, Richard M. Stallman started the GNU Project (
www·gnu·org
), recursively named by the
phrase GNU's Not UNIX. As a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), GNU was intended
to become a recoding of the entire UNIX operating system that could be freely distributed. The GNU
Project page (
www·gnu·org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
) tells the story of how the project came
about in Stallman's own words.
While rewriting millions of lines of code might seem daunting for one or two people, spreading
the effort across dozens or even hundreds of programmers made the project possible. It turned out
that not only could the same results be gained by all new code, but in some cases, that code was
better than the original UNIX versions. Because everyone could see the code being produced for
the project, poorly written code could be corrected quickly or replaced over time.
If you are familiar with UNIX, try searching the more than 3,400 GNU software packages for your
favorite UNIX command from the Free Software Directory (
http://directory.fsf·org/GNU
).
Chances are you will find it there, along with many, many other software projects available as add-ons.
Over time, the term free software has been mostly replaced by the term open source software. As a
nod to both the two camps, however, some people use the term Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS) instead. An underlying principle of FOSS, however, is that, while you are free to use the
software as you like, you have some responsibility to make your improvements to the code avail-
able to others. In that way, everyone in the community can benefit from your work as you have
benefited from the work of others.
To clearly define how open source software should be handled, the GNU software project created
the GNU Public License (you can read the GPL in its entirety at the end of this book). While many
other software licenses cover slightly different approaches to protecting free software, the GPL is
perhaps the most well known -- and it's the one that covers the Linux kernel itself. Basic features
of the GNU Public License include:
Author rights -- The original author retains the rights to his or her software.
Free distribution -- People can use the GNU software in their own software, changing
and redistributing it as they please. They do, however, have to include the source code
with their distribution (or make it easily available).
Copyright maintained -- Even if you were to repackage and resell the software, the orig-
inal GNU agreement must be maintained with the software, which means all future recip-
ients of the software have the opportunity to change the source code, just as you did.
There is no warranty on GNU software. If something goes wrong, the original developer of the soft-
ware has no obligation to fix the problem. However, there are many organizations, big and small,
that offer paid support packages for the software when it is included in their Linux or other open
source software distribution. (See the "OSI Open Source Definition" section later in this chapter
for a more detailed definition of open source software.)
13
Starting with Linux
1
