Written by
Richard Stallman in
1985 as an explanation and
definition of the goals of the
GNU project.
Although last updated in 1993, it is regarded by many in the
Free software movement as a fundamental philosophical
source.
The full text is included with GNU software such as
Emacs and the
Debian GNU/Linux distribution, and is
available on the web at
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html.