The Making of GNU: The World's First Open-Source Software

The GNU Project was the first widely recognized open source software project, as we understand the term today (the practice of sharing and collaborating on software code predates GNU by several years). The making of the GNU Project is a story that every tech enthusiast should know.

It all started in the early 1980s at the prestigious MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where Richard Stallman, a passionate computer programmer and MIT alumnus, was working. Due to his increasing frustration of proprietary software, Richard Stallman announces the GNU Project on September 27, 1983 and resigns from the MIT AI Lab in 1984 to work on GNU full time. Stallman outlines all of the project’s objectives and philosophy in the now-famous GNU Manifesto.
In 1985, he founds the Free Software Foundation, or FSF, to support the GNU Project and promote the free software movement. The FSF becomes the project’s beating heart, providing legal and financial backing to help fund the development of free software. This was swiftly followed by the release of the powerful GNU Emacs text editor in 1985, the versatile GNU Compiler Collection, or GCC, in 1987, and the robust GNU Debugger, or GDB, in 1988.
As the project gains momentum, Stallman introduces the first version of the GNU General Public License, or GPL, in 1989. This ingenious legal framework protects the rights of free software users and developers, ensuring that GPL-licensed software remains free and open for all to modify and redistribute.
This brings us to 1991 - enter a young Finnish computer science student with a penchant for tinkering, Linus Torvalds. The Unix-like operating system, MINIX, couldn’t accomplish what Linus wanted it to do on his Intel 80386 CPU, which led him to create this little kernel, called Linux, in 1991 (more on that in this video - "The Making of Linux..."    • The Making of Linux: The World's Firs...  .
But he hadn’t created other software, like text editors, compilers, or debuggers - like GNU already had. But the kernel, that’s the one thing GNU was missing. Stallman saw Torvald’s kernel as the missing piece of the puzzle and set out to integrate it with the rest of the GNU operating system.
In 1992, Torvalds released the kernel under the GNU General Public License. Now that Linux was GPL-licensed, the Linux and GNU developers worked to combine the Linux kernel with the existing GNU components to create a fully functional and free operating system known as GNU/Linux.
We went over GNU/Linux in-depth in the first video in this series: “The Making of Linux: The World’s First Open Source Operating System”:    • The Making of Linux: The World's Firs...  
This is kind of the merging point of the two videos where in that one you can see how the Linux kernel came about, merged with GNU, and learn just how prevalent GNU/Linux is today.
Anyway… what began as Richard Stallman’s vision has grown into a global movement that champions the values of freedom, collaboration, and community-driven innovation. The GNU Project and the GNU/Linux operating system have not only inspired countless developer and users, but also laid the foundation for a thriving free and open source software ecosystem.

I hope you enjoyed it! If I could ask a favor from those who made it this far and enjoyed this video, share it with your friends. The more I know y’all like it, the more inclined I am to make more episodes in the series. Also comment what software, or even hardware or other historical technologies you’d like to see in this series. I appreciate you all for the never-ending support. Until next time.

The Making of Linux: The World’s First Open Source Operating System:    • The Making of Linux: The World's Firs...  

00:00 GNU's Not Unix
00:33 Announcing My Series "The Making Of..."
01:07 Why Stallman Built GNU
02:13 Richard Stallman Announces The GNU Project
02:47 Founding the Free Software Foundation
03:17 Developers Join GNU and Build Free Software
03:54 First Version of GNU GPL
04:15 Linus Torvald's Makes the Linux Kernel
05:37 GNU/Linux is Built
06:40 Open and Free Software Continues Today...
07:28 Thanks for Watching!!
07:50 Stallman Got Moves

------------------------

🐱‍🚀 GitHub: https://github.com/forrestknight
🐦 Twitter:   / forrestpknight  
💼 LinkedIn:   / forrestpknight  
📸 Instagram:   / forrestpknight  

📓 Learning Resources:
My Favorite Machine Learning Course: https://imp.i384100.net/YgYEBJ
Open Source Computer Science Degree: https://bit.ly/open-source-forrest
Python Open Source Computer Science Degree: https://bit.ly/python-open-source
Udacity to Learn Any Coding Skill: http://bit.ly/udacity-forrest

👨‍💻 My Coding Gear:
My NAS Server: https://amzn.to/3brqO7b
My Hard Drives: https://amzn.to/3aKetMi
My Main Monitor: https://amzn.to/3siQfPa
My Second Monitor: https://amzn.to/3keHT84
My Standing Desk: https://amzn.to/3boAcbC
My PC Build: https://bit.ly/my-coding-gear
My AI GPU: https://amzn.to/3uvmUmz