“In 1984 the GNU Project set out to make it possible to operate
a computer in freedom–to operate it without any non-free software
that would deny the user’s freedom.“At the time, the obstacle to this was simply the operating
system. A computer won’t run without an operating system, but all
the modern operating systems of 1983 were proprietary,
user-subjugating software. There was no way to use modern computers
in freedom. So we launched a campaign to change the situation by
developing a free software operating system, called GNU…”