Happy Birthday indeed.<p>I think there is not enough appreciation how GNU and GPL improved technology in these last decades. Just imagine how many tools we get as open source today and expect to be open source - OS kernels, compilers, databases, desktop environments, browsers, libraries, toolkits, etc. They are not all GPL, but strongly believe that had GPL and Stallman not been there we wouldn't have had other open source licenses either and we would have had to pay for most of it.<p>At the same time I think we are losing a lot of that due to the trend of everything becoming a service. We losing tremendously in regards to privacy in general. The other story on the front page today is how Facebook is using 2FA phone numbers and selling them to advertisers. Yesterday we talked about Google moving to China where people can and will be imprisoned, tortured and killed as a result of a company like Google turning over users data. The irony there is that many of the tech giants that do those things have built their stack on GNU software (GCC, Linux), can imagine a bit how Stallman would feel about that.<p>EDIT: Found this recent 2018 interview with him regarding privacy and what the tech giants are doing these days : <a href="http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/richard-stallman-rms-on-privacy-data-and-free-software.html" rel="nofollow">http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/richard-stallman-rms-on-p...</a>
I'm going to go with the guys who said gcc - I was thinking that as I read the subheading before I read the individual comments. It's just <i>there</i> on every system I use, or available to install quickly.<p>I've used C and C++ compilers that compiled code quicker, or compiled it smaller, or more optimized, that have more copyright notices when invoked, or take more or less time to install, but gcc is ubiquitous, easy to use and (mostly) stays out of your face.<p>The other day I wanted to write some code for an emulator which uses Musashi (68000 CPU emulator). In about 30 or so minutes, I was able to grab the latest binutils+gcc source from ftp.gnu.org, build a cross compiler and compile some code for m68k-elf, objdump it and load it in the emulator. To me anyway, that is pretty awesome.
I think GNU and open source will have a long-lasting impact on science as well. One of its contributions is that now we can point to computer science (esp. in areas like cryptography) as an example of an area where code and methodology etc. are shared openly, setting an example for scientists in more traditional areas, like chemists and biologists, in becoming less closed-fist about their experiments.<p>Going forward, I think we should also emphasize "free data" practices.
Happy Birthday, GNU.<p>While we live in an Open Source World, we wouldn't have the world of Apache2.0, BSD, and MIT that we currently enjoy without the hard fought cultural and legal battles GNU and its GPL fought and won.<p>While people may say GPL's time has passed, let them. Their comments aren't visible to us without dozens of GPL'd systems (linux servers) silently and faithfully providing the strongest counter point possible just outside of sight.
Happy birthday to the project that enabled the revolution in computing that we are enjoying today. Free access to quality code and stuff that helps us all grow as human beings!<p>\o/
Considering the crucial role of Linux in bringing free software to the mainstream, this discussion is particularly interesting <a href="https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/2016-August/thread.html#3542" rel="nofollow">https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/...</a>
I wonder if GNU project will ever be complete. I mean - the main goal was to create an operating system, correct? And AFAIK thanks to Linux it was possible to run plenty of GNU stuff but kernel (GNU Herd) is still not done. Does it mean that GNU project will never be completed? It's kind of sad if you ask me.