Sep 27th will be the 25th anniversary of the initial announcement of GNU: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html
The 15th and 20th anniversaries were marked by RMS publishing an essay: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/15-years-of-free-software.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/use-free-software.html
But there should really be more fuss for the quarter-century anniversary.
I'm kinda short on ideas, but some obvious ones are: * Compile a book on the history of GNU and software freedom (focussing on 1983 to 1998) * Compile info for July to start pitching to the tech magazines to make the GNU anniversary their cover story for September * A general free software event (we actually haven't done this before - not with multiple speakers at least) * An awareness campaign, with a booklet, press releases, and letters to software companies asking them to sign something (anti-swpat?)
I was reminded by this by Bruce Perens' 10 look back at the Open Source marketing campaign: http://perens.com/works/articles/State8Feb2008/
1998, unfortunately, turn into the start of a "let's stop talking about freedom" era. So maybe we should use GNU's 25th birthday to start a "Time to talk about Free Software again" era.
Ideas sought.