had long wanted to talk about today. Not surprisingly, in my college years, I had some (good) teachers who were very committed to the free software movement and ended up greatly influencing my view of the world of computing in general and software in particular.
A little to know a little computer world certainly have heard of GNU. Perhaps you've never known exactly what it is, or think that GNU and Linux are the same thing, or perhaps you are an expert in philosophy and free software licenses and ethical hacker. However, do not pretend to give an explanation about what is GNU but what are his roots, who founded the project and why he did it.
The first question is easy to answer. Richard M. Stallman (henceforth, RMS, as he himself likes to be called), which you can see in the picture. GNU was founded in 1983 by RMS, but to understand the real reasons we must go back a long time ago. several universities in USA are well known and recognized worldwide. So to the eye, comes to head Berkley University and MIT. Within this second school, and distant from the 50's, began to see a generation of young talent for the computer and generally quite small for relationships. Hackers were the first recognized as such, the first generation.
These young people shared a common set of values \u200b\u200band even utopian revolutionaries, where each person was measured by their competence with computers, so that he could do for them and not their sex, race or any traditional measure. This group of young people has evolved over time just as the technology that could work and the new generations of hackers who were arriving.
could say that any hacker philosophy of the time was represented by the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. RMS reached the laboratory in 1971 from the hand of Noftsker Russ, who was hired as a systems programmer, work that combined it with his physics studies.
Here, RMS is the hacker ethic soaked into a particular community member active. However, the time kept moving and the idyllic AI lab was starting to stop being so idyllic. Some influences may not seem particularly important. Until the 70 access to laboratory systems was free and without any bureaucratic hurdle. It just comes, you sit at a terminal, and had access to the same resources as everyone else. Exactly the same, including hardware, printers and even files or programs, since the concept of privacy does not exist in the laboratory. Anyone could see your files, anyone could copy your files, anyone could delete your files. But nobody did. It was a community that shared and worked for the common good and common good is not devoted to destroying the work of others.
However, although this way of thinking and working was accepted into the laboratory, it was the thing changed. MIT was actually getting off the threat of the machines at the AI \u200b\u200bLab and ARPA network that anyone could connect to one of these machines and access the network and, therefore, possible military secrets.
privacy
So was the AI \u200b\u200bLab mode user accounts with passwords. However, RMS always fought for what he could, for example with the first deployment of encrypted passwords, which got cracked and all users sent a message saying what his password and it would be better to leave her white it is much easier to write, is known to all and comes to have the same security as the chosen key.
With the encryption system upgrade, RMS would have it harder when the keys cracking, but found that changing a little getting login program greeted with the same password each time a user is authenticated, so that ultimately end up on passwords as well. Moreover, giving much evidence of its disagreement with the topic of passwords, decided that the emacs text editor could not be installed on machines that used a password system. Why
RMS was so against the keys? Again, must understand the philosophy behind this movement. The MIT AI Lab was characterized as a cooperative world where everyone works for the common good. Set passwords and add privacy was making it difficult for the sharing of knowledge. For RMS, for hackers at MIT, this was the way it should be. If your job because you got some results or information that someone may need to make or improve theirs, would not it be better than all that information was always available for everyone? This is how it worked in the laboratory of MIT. And if someone argued that this could not work, anyone could sabotage your job or whatever, he could teach the laboratory. It is possible, there is an example. But to add privacy, security, bureaucracy ... Utopia broke.
However, adding passwords to user accounts was not by far the greatest threat to the hacker ethic that he loved RMS. For the 70 by the MIT Laboratory had already passed, so to speak, two generations of hackers and were entering the first "remittances" in the third. The first generation was that of the 50's, people who "grew up" with vacuum tube machines. The second generation came in the 60's and were the hackers of the systems timeshare. These two generations (especially the first) and was "doing more" with responsibilities of such a family, a job, a mortgage or pay rent and stuff.
The third generation of hackers was different. The 70 brought a different philosophy, new paradigms, and without the support of more experienced hackers, new ethical. Just for get an idea, think of the book titles and Linux Torlvalds RMS, ie "Free As In Freedom" the first and "Just fon fun" the second to understand some of the difference Linus would even years later. For new generations the concept of Copyright was not an aberration nonsense. In the laboratory and was not all share and work for the common good, and not as the private interest was born in the laboratory in the form of a new company, but the same lab was involved in a trade war between two their offspring.
in this laboratory was the birthplace of the LISP programming language. Since it is the world's most popular language, LISP comes from LISt Processor, and given its characteristics, and considering where it was designed, was regarded as the programming language of the field of artificial intelligence.
While doing a new implementation of LISP was not particularly complicated, do a deployment conditions and was another story. Precisely for this reason, two of the lab hackers decided to create a company to manufacture and sell machines LISP. Initially founded in 1979, Richard Greenblatt LMI, an acronym for LISP Machines, Inc , following a bit of ethics and values \u200b\u200bof the MIT hackers. Here you can see an image of a machine developed by this company. Later, Russ Noftsker, the same hired in 1971 to RMS at MIT, founded Symbolics , the main task of this company ... accurate, manufacture and sell machines LISP. Both companies, therefore, both companies were competing and also had dealings with MIT. And, of course, thrived both the largest pool of experts in LISP which had at that time, namely the MIT AI Lab.
Symbolics (which you can see an example of his machine in the picture) had a more entrepreneurial business, with a more developed marketing and a less than ethical business practices from the standpoint of hacker LMI but yet, perhaps because of it, the success of the far more attracted hackers LMI laboratory. And because of that, Symbolics became the most representative RMS of all that was going wrong in his laboratory. Since the MIT had agreements with two companies, Symbolics was not much for the work to open their programs because, they claimed, that could mean working for the competition. Therefore, no longer provide the source code of their programs. Although
RMS did not work for either company, he did what he was doing ethical Symbolics, so he decided to act, and every time I got the binary of a program as compared with the previous version and from reverse engineer saw there what he was doing the program again, will implement it and passed it LMI. It is possible, as shown in the English Wikipedia, that the reason was because they wanted to have a company with sufficient advantage to have a monopoly on the LISP machines. Perhaps, as Steven Levy says in his book Hackers , is a form of punishment to the unethical practices of a hacker by Symbolics.
In any case, he said in 1982 that could not be passed this way of life, disassembling and re-implemented programs at night and studying for his doctorate in physics in the morning. He gave himself a deadline: one year. Finally, 1983 arrived and with it the moment to rethink the life and future. It was then announced the GNU project, a completely free system where the community work for the community, where red tape is not filed and the rights of an individual, however powerful it might be, prevail over the common good. Many achievements are to be told, both RMS and the GNU project. But that's another story to be told another time ... 
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