Z:gnu-www-ja-use-free-software--779a85-It was 5 Jan 1984, twenty year/en

It was 5 Jan 1984, twenty years ago today, that I quit my job at MIT to begin developing a free software operating system, GNU. While we have never released a complete GNU system suitable for production use, a variant of the GNU system is now used by tens of millions of people who mostly are not aware it is such. Free software does not mean &ldquo;gratis&rdquo;; it means that users are free to run the program, study the source code, change it, and redistribute it either with or without changes, either gratis or for a fee.