[Fsfe-ie] Sep 27th will be GNU's 25th anniversary

[Ciaran O'Riordan]

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.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan (+32 477 36 44 19) \ Support Free Software and GNU/Linux
http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \     Join FSFE's Fellowship:
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