I was surprised and delighted to find this video presentation by one of my favorite performers, Stephen Fry, called “Happy Birthday to GNU”, on the GNU project homepage.

Posted on September 1st, in honor of GNU’s 25th anniversary, it turns out to be only the latest in a series of entries on Mr. Fry’s official blog site praising the virtues of free software.

Stephen Fry promotes GNU/Linux

VIEW on GNU website, or DOWNLOAD video from GNU website.

The video is (appropriately) in Ogg Theora format, a video codex which is free of patent problems and supported by free-licensed video players, including VideoLAN Client (also known as “VLC”). Because this format is not yet as ubiquitous as various closed formats, your browser may not be configured to play it directly (which requires a plugin), but I had no problem playing the downloaded file in both VLC and Kaffeine.

The video is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (CC By-ND 3.0).

Stephen Fry has appeared in numerous films and television series, including Jeeves and Wooster and A Bit of Fry and Laurie , and is particularly noted for his comedic roles and writing.