Happy belated 25th GNU!

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The GNU concept was announced more than a quarter of a century ago on a mailing list by Richard Stallman. The date was Sept. 27. I am a few weeks late mentioning it.

In fairness, the founding of the Free Software Foundation did not happen until a couple of years later and I would expect that to be a bigger celebration. We shall see.

I wrote an article about Richard Stallman a number of years ago where I said:

"Here is what Richard has done for us all: He has created and protected the 'free software' movement. This has been a difficult task against great odds and he has taken a lot of unwarranted personal grief over the years."

True Liberty in all of its various forms still gets a bad rap. It was ever thus.

I am gratified that a true champion of Freedom like Richard Stallman and people like Lawrence Lessig are still around. They have taken outrageous attacks over the years, but I think that might finally be starting to settle down for them. Of course, one worries that this might be preamble to attempting to co-opt them. Lessig appeared to cave a little on DRM, but I can't see Richard ever being anything but his own man.

Congratulations to the FSF and to all of us. It is a milestone worth celebrating.

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