GNU Manifesto

[10] The manifesto was written as a way to familiarize more people with these concepts, and to find more support in form of work, money, programs and hardware.

One of the major driving points behind the GNU project, according to Stallman, was the rapid (at the time) trend toward Unix and its various components becoming proprietary (i.e. closed-source and non-libre) software.

[11] The manifesto lays a philosophical basis for launching the project, and importance of bringing it to fruition — proprietary software is a way to divide users, who are no longer able to help each other.

The author provides many reasons for why the project and software freedom is beneficial to users, although he agrees that its wide adoption will make the work of programmers less profitable.

They include the programmer's need to make a living, the issue of advertising and distributing free software, and the perceived need of a profit incentive.