GNU (/ɡnuː/ⓘ)[3][4] is an extensive collection of free software (394 packages as of June 2024[update][5]), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems.[6][7][8] The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux.[9] Most of GNU is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL).
GNU is also the project within which the free software concept originated. Richard Stallman, the founder of the project, views GNU as a "technical means to a social end".[10] Relatedly, Lawrence Lessig states in his introduction to the second edition of Stallman's book Free Software, Free Society that in it Stallman has written about "the social aspects of software and how Free Software can create community and social justice".[11]
Name
GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!",[6][12] chosen because GNU's design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code.[6][13][14] Stallman chose the name by using various plays on words, including the song The Gnu.[4]: 45:30
History
Development of the GNU operating system was initiated by Richard Stallman while he worked at MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It was called the GNU Project, and was publicly announced on September 27, 1983, on the net.unix-wizards and net.usoft newsgroups by Stallman.[15] 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.[16]
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 in March 1985.[17]
Richard Stallman's experience with the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS),[16] an early operating system written in assembly language that became obsolete due to discontinuation of PDP-10, the computer architecture for which ITS was written, led to a decision that a portable system was necessary.[4]: 40:52 [18] It was thus decided that the development would be started using C and Lisp as system programming languages,[19] and that GNU would be compatible with Unix.[20] At the time, Unix was already a popular proprietary operating system. The design of Unix was modular, so it could be reimplemented piece by piece.[18]
Much of the needed software had to be written from scratch, but existing compatible third-party free software components were also used such as the TeX typesetting system, the X Window System, and the Mach microkernel that forms the basis of the GNU Mach core of GNU Hurd (the official kernel of GNU).[21] With the exception of the aforementioned third-party components, most of GNU has been written by volunteers; some in their spare time, some paid by companies,[22] educational institutions, and other non-profit organizations. In October 1985, Stallman set up the Free Software Foundation (FSF). In the late 1980s and 1990s, the FSF hired software developers to write the software needed for GNU.[23][24]
As GNU gained prominence, interested businesses began contributing to development or selling GNU software and technical support. The most prominent and successful of these was Cygnus Solutions,[22] now part of Red Hat.[25]
Many GNU programs have been ported to other operating systems, including proprietary platforms such as Microsoft Windows[30] and macOS.[31] GNU programs have been shown to be more reliable than their proprietary Unix counterparts.[32][33]
As of June 2024[update], there are a total of 467 GNU packages (including decommissioned, 394 excluding) hosted on the official GNU development site.[34]
In its original meaning, and one still common in hardware engineering, the operating system is a basic set of functions to control the hardware and manage things like task scheduling and system calls. In modern terminology used by software developers, the collection of these functions is usually referred to as a kernel, while an 'operating system' is expected to have a more extensive set of programmes. The GNU project maintains two kernels itself, allowing the creation of pure GNU operating systems, but the GNU toolchain is also used with non-GNU kernels. Due to the two different definitions of the term 'operating system', there is an ongoing debate concerning the naming of distributions of GNU packages with a non-GNU kernel. (See below.)
With the April 30, 2015 release of the Debian GNU/Hurd 2015 distro,[38][39] GNU now provides all required components to assemble an operating system that users can install and use on a computer.[40][41][42]
However, the Hurd kernel is not yet considered production-ready but rather a base for further development and non-critical application usage.[43][40]
Because of the development status of Hurd, GNU is usually paired with other kernels such as Linux[46][47] or FreeBSD.[48] Whether the combination of GNU libraries with external kernels is a GNU operating system with a kernel (e.g. GNU with Linux), because the GNU collection renders the kernel into a usable operating system as understood in modern software development, or whether the kernel is an operating system unto itself with a GNU layer on top (i.e. Linux with GNU), because the kernel can operate a machine without GNU, is a matter of ongoing debate. The FSF maintains that an operating system built using the Linux kernel and GNU tools and utilities should be considered a variant of GNU, and promotes the term GNU/Linux for such systems (leading to the GNU/Linux naming controversy). This view is not exclusive to the FSF.[49][50][51][52][53] Notably, Debian, one of the biggest and oldest Linux distributions, refers to itself as Debian GNU/Linux.[54]
Copyright, GNU licenses, and stewardship
The GNU Project recommends that contributors assign the copyright for GNU packages to the Free Software Foundation,[55][56] though the Free Software Foundation considers it acceptable to release small changes to an existing project to the public domain.[57] However, this is not required; package maintainers may retain copyright to the GNU packages they maintain, though since only the copyright holder may enforce the license used (such as the GNU GPL), the copyright holder in this case enforces it rather than the Free Software Foundation.[58]
For the development of needed software, Stallman wrote a license called the GNU General Public License (first called Emacs General Public License), with the goal to guarantee users freedom to share and change free software.[59] Stallman wrote this license after his experience with James Gosling and a program called UniPress, over a controversy around software code use in the GNU Emacs program.[60][61] For most of the 80s, each GNU package had its own license: the Emacs General Public License, the GCC General Public License, etc. In 1989, FSF published a single license they could use for all their software, and which could be used by non-GNU projects: the GNU General Public License (GPL).[60][62]
This license is now used by most of GNU software, as well as a large number of free software programs that are not part of the GNU Project; it also historically has been the most commonly used free software license (though recently challenged by the MIT license).[63][64] It gives all recipients of a program the right to run, copy, modify and distribute it, while forbidding them from imposing further restrictions on any copies they distribute. This idea is often referred to as copyleft.[65]
In 1991, the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), then known as the Library General Public License, was written for the GNU C Library to allow it to be linked with proprietary software.[66] 1991 also saw the release of version 2 of the GNU GPL. The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), for documentation, followed in 2000.[67] The GPL and LGPL were revised to version 3 in 2007, adding clauses to protect users against hardware restrictions that prevent users from running modified software on their own devices.[68]
Besides GNU's packages, the GNU Project's licenses can[69] and are used by many unrelated projects, such as the Linux kernel, often used with GNU software. A majority of free software such as the X Window System,[70] is licensed under permissive free software licenses.[71]
Logo
The original GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa
The logo for GNU is a gnu head. Originally drawn by Etienne Suvasa, a bolder and simpler version designed by Aurelio Heckert is now preferred.[72][73] It appears in GNU software and in printed and electronic documentation for the GNU Project, and is also used in Free Software Foundation materials.
30th anniversary logo
There was also a modified version of the official logo. It was created by the Free Software Foundation in September 2013 in order to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the GNU Project.[74]
^"What is GNU?". The GNU Operating System. Free Software Foundation. September 4, 2009. Retrieved October 9, 2009. The name 'GNU' is a recursive acronym for 'GNU's Not Unix'; it is pronounced g-noo, as one syllable with no vowel sound between the g and the n.
^"Software – GNU Project". Free Software Foundation, Inc. January 13, 2016. Retrieved January 13, 2016.
^Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. "Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers", Computerworld, April 9, 2009: "... after more than 25 years in development, GNU remains incomplete: its kernel, Hurd, has never really made it out of the starting blocks. ... Almost no one has actually been able to use the OS; it's really more a set of ideas than an operating system."
^Hillesley, Richard (June 30, 2010), "GNU HURD: Altered visions and lost promise", The H (online ed.), p. 3, Nearly twenty years later the HURD has still to reach maturity, and has never achieved production quality. ... Some of us are still wishing and hoping for the real deal, a GNU operating system with a GNU kernel.
^"GNU Operating System – CCM FAQ". CCM. Archived from the original on December 15, 2019. Retrieved April 8, 2018. GNU is an operating system that offers a set of free open source programs.
^Snom Technology. "Source Code & GPL Open Source". www.snom.com. Archived from the original on April 9, 2018. Retrieved April 8, 2018. Variants of the GNU operating system, which use the kernel Linux, are now widely used; though these systems are often referred to as "Linux", they are more accurately called "GNU/Linux systems".
Ex-Minister of State This biographical article is written like a résumé. Please help improve it by revising it to be neutral and encyclopedic. (July 2022) P. P. ChaudharyChairperson Committee on External AffairsIncumbentAssumed office 13 September 2019Minister of State for Corporate Affairs[1]In office3 September 2017 – 30 May 2019Prime MinisterNarendra ModiMinisterArun JaitleyMinister of State for Law & JusticeIn office5 July 2016 – 30 May 2019Prime Minis…
Este artículo o sección necesita referencias que aparezcan en una publicación acreditada.Este aviso fue puesto el 26 de agosto de 2013. Distrito de Sirmia Distrito Coordenadas 44°59′00″N 19°37′00″E / 44.983333333333, 19.616666666667Capital Sremska MitrovicaEntidad Distrito • País Serbia • Provincia VoivodinaSuperficie • Total 3486 km²Población (2002) • Total 335 901 hab. • Densidad 89,58 hab/km
UkraineJoined FIBA1992FIBA zoneFIBA EuropeNational federationUkrainian Basketball FederationWorld ChampionshipsAppearances4Medals Bronze (1): 2012 Home Away Medal record Representing Ukraine World Championships 2012 Greece EuropeanChampionships 2017 Netherlands World Mixed Championships 2012 Greece The Ukrainian men's national 3x3 team represents Ukraine in international 3x3 basketball matches and is controlled by the Ukrainian Basketball Federation. Senior Competitions World Championships…
У Вікіпедії є статті про інших людей із прізвищем Антонеску. Крін Антонеску рум. Crin Antonescu Крін АнтонескуКрін Антонескув. о. Президента Румунії 6 липня 2012 — 27 серпня 2012Попередник Траян БесескуНаступник Траян БесескуГолова Сенату РумуніїНа посаді з 3 липня 2012Попередник…
Bulgarian tenor (1964–2020) Kamen TchanevTchanev as Radames in Aida, Opera Astana in 2019Born(1964-08-27)27 August 1964Sliven, BulgariaDied26 November 2020(2020-11-26) (aged 56)Stara Zagora, BulgariaOccupationopera singer (tenor) Kamen Tchanev / Kamen Chanev (Bulgarian: Камен Чанев) (27 August 1964 – 26 November 2020) was a Bulgarian operatic tenor who enjoyed an international career. Early years and education Kamen Tchanev was born in Sliven and studied at the French language…
EUROZONE Bulgaria Denmark Czech Rep. Hungary Poland Romania Sweden Andorra Monaco San Marino Vatican City Kos. Mont. Eurozone EU members in ERM II, without an opt-out EU members in ERM II, with an opt-out EU members obliged to adopt the euro once convergence criteria are met Non–EU members using the euro with a monetary agreement Non–EU members using the euro unilaterally The enlargement of the eurozone is an ongoing pro…
British TV series or programme Yes, HonestlyGenreSitcomCreated by Terence Brady Charlotte Bingham Starring Donal Donnelly Liza Goddard Country of originUnited KingdomOriginal languageEnglishNo. of series2No. of episodes26ProductionRunning time30 minutesProduction companyLondon Weekend TelevisionOriginal releaseNetworkITVRelease9 January 1976 (1976-01-09) –23 April 1977 (1977-04-23)Related No, Honestly Yes, Honestly is a British television sitcom that aired on ITV from 9 Jan…
PalembayanKecamatanPemandangan desa di daerah Palembayan pada tahun 1920-anNegara IndonesiaProvinsiSumatera BaratKabupatenAgamPemerintahan • CamatSabirunPopulasi • Total- jiwaKode Kemendagri13.06.11 Kode BPS1307100 Luas- km²Nagari/kelurahan- Palembayan adalah sebuah kecamatan yang terletak pada kabupaten Agam, provinsi Sumatera Barat, Indonesia. Wilayah Administratif Pada kecamatan ini terdapat 10 nagari, yaitu: Nagari Ampek Koto Palembayan Nagari Baringin Nagari Sa…
Artikel ini membutuhkan rujukan tambahan agar kualitasnya dapat dipastikan. Mohon bantu kami mengembangkan artikel ini dengan cara menambahkan rujukan ke sumber tepercaya. Pernyataan tak bersumber bisa saja dipertentangkan dan dihapus.Cari sumber: Daftar acara Moji – berita · surat kabar · buku · cendekiawan · JSTOR Logo Moji Halaman ini memuat daftar acara Moji. Program saat ini Berita Liputan 6 Pagi Moji (sebelumnya bernama O Channel Today, Today's Upda…
Miyashita ParkThe park and its commercial complex as of 2020LocationTokyoCoordinates35°39′40″N 139°42′06″E / 35.6612°N 139.7017°E / 35.6612; 139.7017Created1953Websitehttps://www.miyashita-park.tokyo/ Miyashita Park (宮下公園, Miyashita kōen) is a park in the 6th district of Jingūmae, in the Shibuya Ward of Tokyo. Summary Dancers in Miyashita Park Miyashita Park is situated in one of the few green spaces within the business neighborhood of Shibuya Ward, …
1972 film by Waris Hussein The Possession of Joel DelaneyOriginal theatrical posterDirected byWaris HusseinScreenplay byGrimes GriceMatt RobinsonBased onThe Possession of Joel Delaneyby Ramona StewartProduced byMartin PollStarring Shirley MacLaine Perry King CinematographyArthur J. OrnitzEdited byJohn Victor SmithMusic byJoe RaposoProductioncompaniesHaworth ProductionsITC EntertainmentDistributed byParamount Pictures (United States)Scotia-Barber (United Kingdom)Release dates May 24, 19…
American composer and lyricist, singer, pianist Carmino RavosaBorn(1930-01-29)January 29, 1930Springfield, MassachusettsDiedJuly 19, 2015(2015-07-19) (aged 85)White Plains, New YorkAlma materHartt School of MusicOccupation(s)Composer, pianistYears active1958–2015Websitewww.carminoravosa.com Carmino Ravosa (January 29, 1930 – July 19, 2015) was an American composer and lyricist, singer, pianist, as well as a producer, director, and musical historian. Ravosa, who wrote music for…
Community Shield FA 2016TurnamenCommunity Shield FA Manchester United Leicester City 2 1 Tanggal7 Agustus 2016StadionStadion Wembley, London← 2015 2017 → Community Shield FA 2016 adalah pertandingan sepak bola antara Manchester United dan Leicester City yang diselenggarakan pada 7 Agustus 2016 di Stadion Wembley, London. Pertandingan ini merupakan pertandingan ke-94 dari penyelenggaraan Community Shield FA. Pertandingan ini dimenangkan oleh Manchester United dengan skor 2–1.[1&…
For the most recent edition, see Miss Grand Nepal 2022. National beauty contest in Nepal Miss Grand NepalFormationAugust 23, 2016; 7 years ago (2016-08-23)FounderUddhab AdhikariTypeBeauty pageantHeadquartersKathmanduLocationNepalMembership Miss Grand InternationalOfficial language EnglishNational DirectorUddhab AdhikariParent organizationLooks Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. (2016)RK Entertainment Group (2017 – 2018)Izodom Nepal & Cosmo Group (2019 - 2022)Miss…
American artist (born 1979) Tom HerpichHerpich at the Peabody Awards, 2015BornThomas HerpichNew York City, U.S.Alma materSchool of Visual Arts, 2002[1]Known forAnimation, Comics Thomas Herpich is an American artist who is best known for being a writer and storyboard artist on the animated television series Adventure Time. History Herpich graduated from the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and was known in indie cartooning circles before he was hired to work on Adventure Time.[2…
Heterocyclic compound containing a ring of four carbon, one nitrogen and one sulfur atom Phenothiazine Names Preferred IUPAC name 10H-Phenothiazine[1] Other names ThiodiphenylamineDibenzothiazineDibenzoparathiazine10H-dibenzo-[b,e]-1,4-thiazinePTZ Identifiers CAS Number 92-84-2 Y 3D model (JSmol) Interactive image Beilstein Reference 143237 ChEBI CHEBI:37931 Y ChEMBL ChEMBL828 Y ChemSpider 21106365 Y ECHA InfoCard 100.001.997 EC Number 202-196-5 KEGG D02601 Y Pub…
American video game translator Ted WoolseyOccupation(s)Translator, video game producerYears active1991–presentNotable workFinal Fantasy VI, Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger Ted Woolsey is an American video game translator and producer. He had the primary role in the North American production and localization of Square's role-playing video games released for the Super NES between 1991 and 1996. He is best known for translating Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger during his t…
Organ of manipulation and sensation found in the hands of humans and other primates For other uses, see Finger (disambiguation) and Fingertips (disambiguation). FingerThe fingers of a left hand seen from both sidesDetailsIdentifiersLatindigiti manusMeSHD005385TA98A01.1.00.030TA2150FMA9666Anatomical terminology[edit on Wikidata] A finger is a prominent digit on the forelimbs of most tetrapod vertebrate animals, especially those with prehensile extremities (i.e. hands) such as humans and prima…