"Free Software is Nothing GNU
I have supported and been part of the Free Software community since long before there was a "Free Software Foundation". As far back as the early 1970's, and maybe earlier, there were many flourishing freeware communities around MIT, around other universities, and even amongst commercial users of IBM mainframes. As a single example, we at the University of Toronto used - and contributed to - the freeware library supported and maintained by SHARE, the organization of IBM mainframe users. Meanwhile, back at the Bay, Berkeley UNIX was coalescing, the original free-software movement, while Richard Stallman in the MIT AI lab was still to learn his biggest lesson, that some programmers like to get paid well for their efforts.
While I empathize with many of the friends of the FSF, I oppose its hidden political agenda. It's no coincidence that "The GNU Manifesto" was named after "The Communist Manifesto"... although Stallman now denies this, and the records have been obliterated, I'm sure he was once quoted as saying it was not a coincidence.
I also object to the FSF's attempts attempts to equate "free software" with GnuWare - it reminds one too much of Microsoft getting a trademark on the word "Windows" when Macs, UNIXes (with X11, GL, Mgr and others) and even 3270's have windows too. There is plenty of good software-in-source that is not covered by the GPL, including 4.4BSD-Lite, OpenBSD (also NetBSD, FreeBSD), the Apache Web Server, The X Window System, and many others, not to mention my own contributions listed above. "
