BANGALORE, INDIA: The GNU OS is announced by Richard Stallman. The GNU Project is a mass collaboration project for open and free software The GNU Project gave birth to the GNU General Public License (GPL), arguably the most popular open source license model out there. The OS required a kernel for its completion.

The GNU manifesto, a statement by Richard Stallman advocating the cause of free software movement, is published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. The founding goal of the GNU project was, to develop “a sufficient body of free software [...] to get along without any software that is not free.”

MINIX was first released with its complete source code made available to universities for study in courses and research. MINIX is a Unix like  OS based on a microkernel architecture created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum for educational purposes; MINIX also inspired the creation of the Linux kernel.

Linus Torvalds creates Linux. He built a simple kernel for a Unix-like OS that runs on an Intel 386 processor. The kernel eventually becomes Linux version 0.01 and is released and put on the Net. He initially wanted to call it “Freax”. The Linux kernel became the last piece of the puzzle for the GNU OS project, providing an entirely free and open source OS.

• Linus licences Linux under the GPL. When the Linux kernel arrived, GNU software made it possible to be turned into a complete OS as the kernel was the last piece of the jigsaw.
• Adam Richter announces the release of the first Linux Distribution from his company: Yggdrasil.
• Peter MacDonald announces SLS, the first standalone Linux install.
• The first Linux newsgroup, comp.os.linux, is proposed and started by Ari Lemmke.