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Is it time for Free software to move on?

by Glyn Moody

A remarkable continuity underlies free software, going all the way back to Richard Stallman's first programs for his new GNU project. And yet within that continuity, there have been major shifts: are we due for another such leap?

In the beginning, RMS (Richard Matthew Stallman) was focussed on creating a Unix-like system:

To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hard copy documentation.

GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to have longer file names, file version numbers, a crash proof file system, file name completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages. We will have network software based on MIT's chaosnet protocol, far superior to UUCP.

As this section from the initial 1983 announcement of the GNU project shows, Stallman naturally focussed on the key software components of an operating system: kernel plus editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, etc. Once these were available, the idea was to move on to user space – things like text formatters, games and even a spreadsheet.

Of course, this plan was rather derailed by the difficulty in getting the very first of these – the kernel – sorted out. It was only when a Finnish student working in his Helsinki bedroom offered his “just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU” project that things finally began to fall into place. By then, nearly ten years had passed since the original call to digital arms by RMS, and the computing world had moved on.

Although Unix was still a major force, it was clear the main technological developments were taking place on the desktop – that is, in precisely the userland projects that were secondary to GNU's priorities. As a result, a new generation of hackers started turning their attention to end-user applications without waiting for the GNU project to address this aspect.

Next: The GIMP

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