For example, many believe that once Linus Torvalds finished writing Linux, the kernel, its users looked around for other free software to go with it, and found that for no particular reason most everything necessary to make a Unix-like system was already available. What they found was no accident—it was the not-quite-complete GNU system. The available free software added up to a complete system because the GNU Project had been working since to make one.
By the time Linux was started, GNU was almost finished. Most free software projects have the goal of developing a particular program for a particular job. It's natural to measure the contribution of this kind of project by specific programs that came from the project. If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? But that is not the deepest way to consider the question.
The GNU Project was not, is not, a project to develop specific software packages. It was not a project to develop a C compiler , although we did that. It was not a project to develop a text editor, although we developed one. Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit for their software.
But the reason it is an integrated system —and not just a collection of useful programs—is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. But at the same time, it implicitly encourages the community to accept nonfree software as a good thing, and forget the goal of freedom.
It is not good to drive faster if you can't stay on the road. When they write free software that depends on the nonfree package, their software cannot be part of a completely free system. Motif and Qt trapped large amounts of free software in this way in the past, creating problems whose solutions took years. Motif remained somewhat of a problem until it became obsolete and was no longer used.
Later, Sun's nonfree Java implementation had a similar effect: the Java Trap , fortunately now mostly corrected. Five years from now, we will surely still have plenty of free software; but if we are not careful, it will hardly be usable without the nonfree software that users expect to find with it.
If this happens, our campaign for freedom will have failed. If releasing free alternatives were simply a matter of programming, solving future problems might become easier as our community's development resources increase.
But we face obstacles that threaten to make this harder: laws that prohibit free software. As software patents mount up, and as laws like the DMCA are used to prohibit the development of free software for important jobs such as viewing a DVD or listening to a RealAudio stream, we will find ourselves with no clear way to fight the patented and secret data formats except to reject the nonfree programs that use them.
Meeting these challenges will require many different kinds of effort. But what we need above all, to confront any kind of challenge, is to remember the goal of freedom to cooperate. We can't expect a mere desire for powerful, reliable software to motivate people to make great efforts. We need the kind of determination that people have when they fight for their freedom and their community—determination to keep on for years and not give up.
In our community, this goal and this determination emanate mainly from the GNU Project. From the start, Linux was designed to be a multi-tasking, multi-user system. These facts are enough to make Linux different from other well-known operating systems.
However, Linux is even more different than you might imagine. In contrast to other operating systems, nobody owns Linux. Much of its development is done by unpaid volunteers. These tools enable users to perform tasks ranging from the mundane such as copying or removing files from the system to the arcane such as writing and compiling programs or doing sophisticated editing in a variety of document formats.
While many groups and individuals have contributed to Linux, the largest single contributor is still the Free Software Foundation, which created not only most of the tools used in Linux, but also the philosophy and the community that made Linux possible. The Linux kernel first appeared in , when a Finnish computing science student named Linus Torvalds announced an early version of a replacement kernel for Minix to the Usenet newsgroup comp.
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