Saturday 24 March 2012

Linux OS is wrong. It is ....

Journey of GNU project and FSF:

Opensource was started specially to reject the ideas that every individual stand for. It is mainly a journey of freedom.
Let's find more in detail about GNU and FSF(Free Software Foundation):

When it comes to Free Software Foundation, there can be no one as assertive as Richard M Stallman.He knew from his experience that free software was a good way of life, when he was working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence in 1970s. The lab was part of free software community. Software's used were very rare exceptions, and was free. A lot of it had been written by Stallman and developers. They were able to fix things that was bothering people.


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In 1971, he was hired by a lab. Lots of operating systems were free. But, by the end of 1980s, free software had become rare. Proprietary software was the norm everywhere--and then in the early 80s, our community died, and he was dropped into proprietary world. He refused to live that way, making all his efforts for you.

1983, launched Free Software movement, with the goal to make it possible to use computers and have freedom. So wanted to have an operating system that was free. They had PDP10, which became obsolete in 80s; so all software was absolete too. All other computer systems with software was proprietary.

Stallman decided to plan UNIX-like OS that would be entirely free software. Hence he named as GNU which means GNU is Not Unix.

1980s, lot of work was done for UNIX-like OS, which has hundred of components. Few components were found from somebody else who wrote for different purpose, and were free software. other components we had to develop. CSRG(Computer Systems Research Group) at Berkeley had written a code to change UNIX, but their was mixed in AT&T's and so was propritery. Stallman suggested them to write separate software and release it freely, later can be used into GNU system.

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1992, GNU was complete system, but one essential component was missing, kernel. So started to develop in 1990, which gave it somewhat character of a research project, taking six years to get a test version. 1992, Linux Torvalds, who had a proprietary kernel called Linux kernel, decided to make it free. The combination of the Linux kernel with the rest of the GNU system made a complete OS, which was basically GNU, but also contained Linux.

So calling Linux OS is wrong, it is GNU/Linux.

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