Introduction to Free Software - SELF | Sharing Knowledge about ...

© FUOC • P07/M2101/02709 21 Free Software
Richard Stallman also founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in order
to obtain funds, which he uses to develop and protect free software, and es-
tablished his ethical principles with the "The GNU Manifesto" (Free Software
Foundation, 1985) [117] and "Why software should not have owners" (Richard
Stallman, 1998) [207].
From a technical point of view, the GNU project was conceived as a highly
structured task with very clear goals. The usual method was based on relati-
vely small groups of people (usually volunteers) developing one of the tools
that would then fit perfectly into the complete jigsaw (the GNU system). The
modularity of Unix, on which this project was inspired, fully coincided with
that idea. The method of working generally implied the use of Internet, but
because at that time it was not extensively implanted, the Free Software Foun-
dation would also sell tapes on which it would record the applications, which
means that it was probably one of the first organisations to obtain financial
compensation (albeit in a rather limited way) from creating free software.
In the early 90s, about six years after the project was founded, GNU was very
close to having a complete system similar to Unix. However, at that point it
had not yet produced one of the key parts: the system's core (also known as
the kernel, the part of the operating system that relates with the hardware, abs-
tracts it, and allows applications to share resources, and essentially, to work).
However, GNU software was very popular among the users of several different
variants of Unix, at the time the most commonly used operating system in
businesses. Additionally, the GNU project had managed to become relatively
well known among IT professionals, and especially among those working at
universities. In that period, its products already had a well-deserved reputati-
on for stability and good quality.
2.2.2. Berkeley's CSRG
Since 1973, the CSRG (Computer Science Research Group) of the University
of California, in Berkeley, had been one of the centres where the most Unix-
related developments had been made, especially during 1979 and 1980. Not
only were applications ported and other new ones built to function on Unix,
but also important improvements were made to the kernel and a lot of functi-
onality had been added. For example, during the 80s, several DARPA contracts
(under the US Ministry of Defence) financed the implementation of TCP/IP
which until today has been considered the reference for the protocols that
make the Internet work (in the process, linking the development of the In-
ternet and the expansion of Unix workstations). Many companies used the
CSRG's developments as the bases for their Unix versions giving rise to well-
known systems at the time, such as SunOS (Sun Microsystems) or Ultrix (Di-
gital Equipment). This is how Berkeley became one of the two fundamental
sources of Unix, together with the "official", AT&T.