Happy Birthday, Free Software Foundation

Published on: October 4, 2010 • Filed in: Industry News • Tagged as: Free Software Foundation, GIMP, GNU, Linux

The Free Software Foundation is 25 years old today. Founded by Richard Stallman, the FSF promotes the creation and distribution of free software, allowing software users four basic freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study, change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes.

Even if you have never heard of the Free Software Foundation, chances are you have benefited from their work today. The vast majority of websites, this one included, are located on computers running Linux, an operating system that was released under version 2 of the GNU GPL as free software. Another great piece of free software is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), an image editor that functionally is, in my opinion, every bit as good as Photoshop with one important difference: GIMP is 100% free and can be downloaded from their website.

Happy 25th Birthday, Free Software Foundation!