Tracing the FSF's Footsteps
The FSF's seemingly mundane physical location history offers a glimpse into the organization's growth and tells the story of an important part of the free software movement. Let's follow the FSF''s footsteps through the years.
The FSF emerged on October 4, 1985 during the burgeoning tech revolution. The FSF's mission was clear: grant users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify software. In its early days, the FSF primarily focused on hiring talented programmers to contribute to the GNU Project, an ambitious endeavor to create a completely free operating system. Its mission of free software for all was welcome in the thriving hacker culture at MIT. The FSF's initial headquarters were nestled within the walls of Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) at 1000 Massachusetts Ave, a company with deep ties to the local hacker community. LMI generously provided the fledgling FSF with office space, computing resources, and a mailing address, and MIT even supplied desks. While LMI was the first home of the FSF, it would not be the forever home. Once a promising innovation, Lisp Machines faced harsh market realities and went out of business in 1987, leading the FSF to begin the search for a new base.
During and after the relocation to 675 Massachusetts Ave, the FSF remained steadfast in its mission, mailing out tapes of free software and raising funds to support the development of GNU. This period was marked by significant achievements, including the release of GNU General Public License (GPL) versions 1 and 2 in 1989 and 1991, respectively. These licenses became the bedrock of the free software movement, ensuring that software released under their terms would remain free for users to use, study, modify, and share. A year later, in 1992, Linus Torvalds, the creator of the kernel named Linux, decided to relicense his program under the GPL instead of the original nonfree license. This seemingly small act had a profound impact, effectively completing the GNU operating system. The GNU Project, which had been diligently developing a free operating system since 1983, finally had all the necessary components to realize its vision. The dream of using a computer with complete freedom was now a reality with GNU/Linux.