I can't understand the role of the GNU organization. Translated as a project *** not Unix. Um ... well, if not Unix, then why is their gdb project a debugger for a Unix system?

  • The name is, because design was very similar to Unix, but was for free software. And at the dawn of the Unix era was very popular. - Unick
  • 2
    @Unick is not free, but open / free - insolor
  • @insolor I was based on this: Unix-like design, but it differs from Unix by design. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU ) - Unick
  • one
    @Unick from English free translates as free or as free. In this case, this refers to freedom (as free speech - freedom of speech), and not free (as free beer). - insolor
  • one
    @insolor, thanks for the clarification. - Unick

2 answers 2

The GNU Project (The GNU Project), a free software development project, is the result of the collaboration of many individual projects. The project was launched by Richard Stallman, an ACT programmer and supporter, on September 27, 1983 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original goal of the project was to “develop enough free software to do without software that is not free.”

The current work of the GNU project includes developing software, raising awareness, conducting political campaigns and distributing new materials.

Perhaps in the context of your question, the most interesting phrase

is the result of the collaboration of many individual projects

Manifesto

Licenses

Programs . I am sure you will be interested in the list.

The philosophy of what is happening in this project is well illustrated by the existence of my beloved LibreJS .

addition to Firefox, allowing you to refuse to execute non-free JavaScript code. According to Richard Stallman, the problem with JavaScript is that the code is loaded without the user's knowledge, making it impossible to assess its degree of freedom before downloading and prevent the execution of proprietary JavaScript code. The license used in the JavaScript code is determined by specifying special labels on the site or by analyzing the presence of a mention of the license in the code comments. In addition, by default, it is allowed to execute trivial JavaScript code, well-known libraries and code from sites whitelisted by users.

    About the title.

    In the old * nix-world, it was common practice that someone take a program, change it a little, or write a compatible, but slightly different one. As a result, a new program must somehow be called. Usually, a couple of letters were added to characterize the improvement under this naming scheme, for example, syslog-ng , aircrack-ng (Next Generation), vim (Vi IMproved), or the author’s name: ksh (Korn SHell). In the absence of ubiquitous Internet access and the fact that writing software for themselves was the norm, dozens of such options accumulated and each network had its own.

    In the 80s, the editor of TECO (tiko) was distributed and, by analogy, its editors, many programmers hackers called their products such-and-such and such-and-such, but one clever hacker decided to joke and called his editor tint (Tint Is Not Teco ). The joke was to the taste of many and even partly became the tradition of naming.

    Richard Matthew Stallman (rms) is one of those fat funny guys who basically like to joke and who likes this joke as well. When he began to search for a name for his free UNIX-like operating system, he decided to stick to the pattern “something is not UNIX”, but none of the 26 possible variants of “? INU” was a word and the name was not that interesting. As a result, with a strong-willed decision, he cut it down by one letter and got the classic “GNU's Not Unix”, which on the one hand followed the tradition, and on the other had a trail of second readings, including “not UNIX from GNU” and “not UNIX from " etc.

    A free retelling of the rms lecture itself.