From: Darcy Brockbank <samurai AT amber DOT hasc DOT ca>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 95 17:20:07 -0500
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Re: The meaning of "GNU"
Reply-To: darcy AT amber DOT hasc DOT ca


GNU's Not Unix. From the Jargon File:

GNU  /gnoo/, *not* /noo/
1. acronym: `GNU's Not UNIX!', see recursive acronym* A UNIX-workalike
development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman
<rms AT gnu DOT ai DOT mit DOT edu>.  GNU EMACS and the GNU C compiler, two tools designed
for this project, have become very popular in hackerdom and elsewhere.  The
GNU project was designed partly to proselytize for RMS's position that
information is community property and all software source should be shared.
One of its slogans is "Help stamp out software hoarding!"  Though this remains 
controversial (because it implicitly denies any right of designers to own,
assign, and sell the results of their labors), many hackers who disagree with
RMS have nevertheless cooperated to produce large amounts of high-quality
software for free redistribution under the Free Software Foundation's
imprimatur.  See EMACS*, copyleft*, General Public Virus*.

2. Noted UNIX hacker John Gilmore <gnu AT toad DOT com>, founder of USENET's anarchic 
alt.* hierarchy.

---

recursive acronym : pl.n. A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to
choose acronyms/abbreviations that refer humorously to themselves or to other
acronyms/abbreviations.  The classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE 
("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially").  More recently,
there is a Scheme compiler called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and
GNU* (q.v., sense 1) stands for "GNU's Not UNIX!" --- and a company with the
name CYGNUS, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support".  See also mung*,
EMACS*.

- darcy

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 19:14:02 +0200 (GMT)
From: Gold Fields Mining Development <gfmd AT is DOT co DOT za>
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: The meaning of "GNU"

Hi all,

I'm asking this purely out of interest.  The FSF currently distributes a
whole bunch of programs / utilities all prefixed with GNU.  Is this an
acronym for something or was it simply the first word that came to mind
when the first program was released under the FSF "banner" some time ago?

Regards
Brendan Theron
Systems Programmer
Management Services Division
Gold Fields Mining and Development Limited