Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by
John Gilmore John Gilmore may refer to:
* John Gilmore (activist) (born 1955), co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Cygnus Solutions
* John Gilmore (musician) (1931–1995), American jazz saxophonist
* John Gilmore (representative) (1780–1845), ...
,
Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is an American software developer and executive, serving as vice president of open source affairs at Red Hat, Inc., and former President of the Open Source Initiative.
Biography
He earned a bachelor's degree from the Moore Schoo ...
and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for
free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...
. Its tagline was: ''Making free software affordable''.
For years, employees of Cygnus Solutions were the maintainers of several key
GNU
GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...
software products, including the
GNU Debugger
The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Go, and partially others.
History
GDB was first written by ...
and
GNU Binutils
The GNU Binary Utilities, or , are a set of programming tools for creating and managing binary programs, object files, libraries, profile data, and assembly source code.
Tools
They were originally written by programmers at Cygnus Solutions.
...
(which included the
GNU Assembler
The GNU Assembler, commonly known as gas or as, is the assembler developed by the GNU Project. It is the default back-end of GCC. It is used to assemble the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel, and various other software. It is a part of ...
and
Linker
Linker or linkers may refer to:
Computing
* Linker (computing), a computer program that takes one or more object files generated by a compiler or generated by an assembler and links them with libraries, generating an executable program or shar ...
). It was also a major contributor to the
GCC project and drove the change in the project's management from having a single gatekeeper to having an independent committee. Cygnus developed
BFD, and used it to help port GNU to many architectures, in a number of cases working under
non-disclosure
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract or part of a contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish ...
to produce tools used for initial bringup of
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
for a new chip design.
Cygnus was also the original developer of
Cygwin
Cygwin ( ) is a POSIX-compatible programming and runtime environment that runs natively on Microsoft Windows. Under Cygwin, source code designed for Unix-like operating systems may be compiled with minimal modification and executed.
The Cygwin in ...
, a
POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interf ...
layer and the
GNU
GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...
toolkit port to the
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
family, and of
eCos
The Embedded Configurable Operating System (eCos) is a free and open-source real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to preci ...
, an embedded
real-time operating system
A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which m ...
.
In the 2001 documentary film ''
Revolution OS
''Revolution OS'' is a 2001 documentary film that traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source, and the free software movement.
Directed by J. T. S. Moore, the film features interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs incl ...
'', Tiemann indicates that the name "Cygnus" was chosen from among several names that incorporated the acronym "GNU" such as "magnum", "wingnut", and "lugnut". According to
Stan Kelly-Bootle, it was recursively defined as ''Cygnus, your GNU Support''.
On November 15, 1999, Cygnus Solutions announced its merger with
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Red Hat has become ass ...
, and it ceased to exist as a separate company in early 2000.
, a number of Cygnus employees continue to work for Red Hat, including Tiemann, who serves as Red Hat's Vice President of Open Source Affairs, and formerly served as
CTO.
References
External links
* .
* .
{{Red Hat
Free software companies
Software companies disestablished in 2000
Software companies established in 1989