25 Years Of Software Freedom

GNU project celebrates its 25th birthday this month. FSF has kick started a month long celebration and has released a video featuring Stephen Fry. The video is available for download from here.

GNU project was started with the vision of providing a free(as in freedom) operating system and to uphold the ideals of the knowledge sharing. It was an answer to the nondisclosure agreements - that the companies required you, the users, to sign- which prevented the knowledge sharing.

Stallman said

The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker. Most likely I would also be developing software that was released under nondisclosure agreements, thus adding to the pressure on other people to betray their fellows too.

He chose the harder but a more moral choice. GNU  was born.
This article describes the history of GNU briefly. Do read it. Here is the initial annoncement of GNU project.