Numerous different calendar systems are used in the world.

The Christian/Western/Gregorian calendar counts the years from an estimate of the year when Jesus was born, and the year turns when the date changes from Dec 31 to Jan 1.

There are lunar and solar calendar systems that have been running for far longer than that, and that turn the years on different days.

There's Unix calendar that counts seconds elapsed since 1970-01-01 00:00 UTC, and that will overflow into the 32nd bit in 2038.

There's a Mayan calendar that would make 2012-12-21 an end-of-the-world, or at least the end of an era.

For people who appreciate software freedom, 1983-09-27 12:35:59 EST is the beginning of an era: when people started realizing the threat of nonfree, user-controlling software and started organizing to fight back for control over computing. That was the timestamp of the usenet news post that announced GNU and invited hackers to join in and contribute to make an operating system that gave its users the control they deserved.

This effort flourished and skyrocketed into GNU/Linux, an operating system that, under influence of propaganda, many people have unfortunately come to refer to as the latecomer piece that completed the puzzle: Linux. That was an important piece, but the solution had been under construction for almost a decade before Linux came to be.

Anyhow... GNU is about to turn 43. Unlike the christian/gregorian calendar, that started counting at year 1 after year 1 b.C., the software freedom calendar starts counting from 0, because, C, that's Unix tradition.

So now we're about to wrap up GNU year 42 and start GNU year 43.

Happy GNU Year!

So blong,