:18:04
downloading GNU free software from the Internet,
:18:09
building it and installing it on that Sun machine.
:18:12
The crucial thing about GNU is that
it's free software.
:18:17
And Free Software refers not to price,
but to freedom.
:18:21
So think of free speech, not free beer.
:18:25
The freedoms that I am talking about
:18:28
are the freedoms to make changes if you want to,
:18:32
or hire somebody else to make changes for you
:18:35
if you're using a software for your business,
:18:38
to redistribute copies,
to share with other people,
:18:42
and to make improvements and publish them
:18:46
so that other people can
get the benefit of them, too.
:18:49
And those are the freedoms that distinguish
free software from non-free software.
:18:54
These are the freedoms that
enable people to form a community.
:18:59
If you don't have all these freedoms,
:19:01
you're being divided and
dominated by somebody.
:19:05
My first experience contributing to free software
:19:09
came in late 1989, early 1990.
:19:14
I was working as a graduate student
at Stanford University
:19:18
on Computer Aided Design tools.
:19:21
One of the pieces I needed was a tool
:19:23
called a parser generator.
:19:26
Well, the Free Software Foundation
:19:28
under Richard Stallman
created a great tool called "bison".
:19:33
I needed a tool that worked with C++.
Bison worked with C.
:19:38
I modified bison to create something
called "bison++".
:19:42
And it's a tremendous feeling of empowerment
:19:45
be able to take a piece of software that was available
:19:49
and create what you needed
in a very short piece of time by modifying it.
:19:54
I put it back on the Internet
:19:57
and I was amazed at the number of people
:19:59
that picked it up and started using it.