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Watch a 25-year old GNU, Fry on camera!

Steve Woods International IT News, Media and Content, Open Source News 2 Comments »

Stephen Fry, well-known modern renaissance man, TV and radio personality and lesser known free software advocate, has produced a video to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the GNU Project by Richard Stallman.

In the video, Fry explains why free software (as used by Bristol Wireless. Ed.) is important, both to him and for society in general, like good science. Indeed he believes proprietary software licensing is akin to bad science, i.e. bad for science specifically and the wider community too.

Twenty-five years ago, the GNU Project started with a specific overall goal: to create a free software operating system, the GNU System. The scope of GNU is far-reaching: any job that computer users want to do should be feasible with free software.

Here at Bristol Wireless, we too would like to join Stephen in wishing GNU a many happy returns for its 25th birthday. Without the efforts of GNU and other members of the free software community, we would not have been able to achieve all that we have so far.

Stephen’s video can be watched at or downloaded from GNU.

2 Responses to Watch a 25-year old GNU, Fry on camera!

  1. Matt Lee September 3, 2008 at 3:06 am #

    Thanks for the post.

    Glad you liked the video!

  2. woodsy September 3, 2008 at 2:58 pm #

    Matt,

    It’s not just the video we like: the software rocks too! 😀

    I wonder if you saw the following from El Reg’s 25th anniversary GNU piece, which I thought particularly relevant:

    The words “freedom” and “community” have been grabbed by policy wonks, bureaucrats, politicians and marketeers. Taking the metaphor, and throwing away the principles, it’s become a way of manufacturing consensus: used in rhetoric designed to justify plantation-style labour, cultural misanthropy and economic Feudalism, all promising to hurl us back to a pre-Enlightenment era. You’ll now see Open Source freely used as a cynical marketing tactic, and note that “community development” of software is almost entirely funded by one or two huge corporations (Google and IBM).

    But you can’t blame GNU for the bad metaphorical logic used by the political class, or similar opportunists.

    Stallman looks more justified than ever in rejecting utilitarian arguments for “the four freedoms”. Software is simply a tool, and he’s helped keep it open.