The importance of GNU

Let's apply a famous phrase from the Simpsons somewhat adapted to the case "Everyone says, Linux this, Linux that, but nobody says, we are going to work for HURD, we are going to defend the freedom of users"

GNU (GNU is not Unix, recursive acronym) is the response created by the alter ego of Saint Ignatius better known as Richard Stallman since that way we mortals could better appreciate its premises, in a mortal and recognizable way (end of the joke)

If you are interested in delving into the reasons for its creation and its objectives, you can consult the GNU manifesto on the GNU project website of course, in Spanish.

Some quick history

Back in the 80s, companies began to implement closed source code in their products, our Richard was taken by surprise with a printer to which he wanted to include a basic function not available from the factory and when he wanted to request the code they denied it from the headquarters of its peripheral.

Given this, instead of sitting with his arms crossed bitterly with the world that was presented before him, he decided to head the philosophy what he decided to call «Free software«, Create the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and develop a whole series of tools that would eventually become the basis of a operating system called GNU However, it was difficult to create a Kernel (which they called HURD) that was fully operational, Linux arrived here and filled that space, however HURD continues in development and is already available for testing as Debian HURD. So we have that our lifelong Linux is actually a GNU operating system with Linux Kernel, and in turn we also find Linux that are not GNU as is the case with Android.

The most important thing here is the philosophy behind it, the 4 freedoms; here lies the core of what we know today as GNU / Linux, many programming languages, programs, games, video game engines, and more.

The 4 Freedoms of Free Soft

As you can read on the GNU website whose content is also free for dissemination (otherwise it would be quite ironic) the four freedoms are (Copied together as Stallman likes):

• The freedom to run the program as desired, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to do what you want (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a necessary condition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies to help others (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of its modified versions to third parties (freedom 3). This allows you to offer the entire community the opportunity to benefit from the modifications. Access to the source code is a necessary condition for this.

Here we see that open source is not exactly free software, but we'll talk about that in another article.

How do the 4 freedoms affect us? 

Have you used Python, WordPress, Ruby, C, C ++, Apache? Maybe you like designing games on Godot Engine? Do graphic work with GIMP, Krita or Ink Scape? Multimedia editing with Blender or Audacity?

The license created by the FSF called GPL (GNU Public License) has not been applied only to its own projects, many others such as those mentioned above among others are covered by this license or similar, that is why it is so easy to have access to the source code of a Kernel as Linux ( Covered under the GPL version 2 license, hence its success in being free and collaborative) that you can find on Kernel.org for downloading and viewing, modification and more.

Or create modules, frameworks and the like for languages ​​such as Python, Ruby or PHP, although it must be borne in mind that Free does not mean free, of course you can commercialize Free software, in fact Stallman himself encourages it, many projects have achieved income even in emergency cases where they are threatened by problems of thousands of euros as we can see in this article Fortunately, it had a happy ending and Krita obtained a donation for a total of the debt and much more, which they used to promote the development of the program, a development that has been at our disposal for some time.

Although many tools are not strictly licensed under the GPL, the FSF is strictly monitored and has here A list of licenses that are compatible with yours is available.

Remember, if you use GNU / Linux give it the recognition it deserves GNU, thanks to the fact that it is a free operating system with large communities and programs behind it.

That's all for now, if you like a piece of software and want to say "thank you" there is no better way than to make a donation to them or if you value the work of the FSF also donate, you will make Stallman happy :)