GNU () is an extensive collection of

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 ...

(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 operating systems popularly known as

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. Most of GNU is licensed under the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...

's own General Public License (

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

Richard Stallman - Fête de l'Humanité 2014 - 010

GNU is also the project within which the free software concept originated.

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

, the founder of the project, views GNU as a "technical means to a social end". Relatedly,

Lawrence Lessig Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...

states in his introduction to the second edition of Stallman's book ''

Free Software, Free Society ''Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman'' is a collection of writings (mostly essays, with occasional articles, interviews and speech transcripts) by Richard Stallman. It introduces the subject of history and develop ...

'' that in it Stallman has written about "the social aspects of software and how Free Software can create community and social justice".

Name

''GNU'' is a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hof ...

for "GNU's Not Unix!", chosen because GNU's design is

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

, but differs from

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

by being free software and containing no Unix code. Stallman chose the name by using various plays on words, including the song ''

The Gnu "The Gnu" (sometimes known as "A Gnu", "I'm a Gnu" or "The Gnu Song") is a humorous song about a talking gnu by Flanders and Swann. The word ''gnu'' is consistently pronounced in the song with two syllables as "g-noo", with the ''g'' clearly ...

''.

History

Development of the GNU operating system was initiated by

while he worked at

MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

. It was called the GNU Project, and was publicly announced on September 27, 1983, on the net.unix-wizards and net.usoft

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...

s by Stallman. Software development began on January 5, 1984, when Stallman quit his job at the Lab so that they could not claim ownership or interfere with distributing GNU components as free software. The goal was to bring a completely free software operating system into existence. Stallman wanted computer users to be free to study the source code of the software they use, share software with other people, modify the behavior of software, and publish their modified versions of the software. This philosophy was published as the

GNU Manifesto __NOTOC__ The ''GNU Manifesto'' is a call-to-action by Richard Stallman encouraging participation and support of the GNU Project's goal in developing the GNU free computer operating system. The GNU Manifesto was published in March 1985 in '' D ...

in March 1985. Richard Stallman's experience with the

Incompatible Timesharing System Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) is a time-sharing operating system developed principally by the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, with help from Project MAC. The name is the jocular complement of the MIT Compatible Time-Sharing Sy ...

(ITS), an early operating system written in

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

that became obsolete due to discontinuation of

PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...

, the computer architecture for which ITS was written, led to a decision that a

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

system was necessary. It was thus decided that the development would be started using C and

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

as system programming languages, and that GNU would be compatible with Unix. At the time, Unix was already a popular

proprietary {{Short pages monitor *

Free software movement The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the s ...

History of free and open-source software In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software p ...

List of computing mascots This is a list of computing mascots. A mascot is any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity. In case of computing mascots, they either represent software, hardware, or an ...

* :Computing mascots

References

External links

*
Ports of GNU utilities for Microsoft Windows

The daemon, the GNU and the penguin
{{Authority control Free software operating systems GNU Project GNU Project software Mach (kernel) Microkernel-based operating systems Unix variants Acronyms