The GNU operating system is a complete free software system,upward-compatible with Unix. GNU stands for “GNU's Not Unix.”It is pronounced as one syllable with ahard g.Richard Stallman made theInitial Announcement ofthe GNU Project in September 1983. A longer version calledthe GNU Manifesto was published inMarch 1985. It has been translated into severalother languages.
The name “GNU” was chosen because it met a fewrequirements; first, it was a recursive acronym for “GNU's NotUnix,” second, because it was a real word, and third, it was funto say (orsing).
The word “free” in “free software” pertains tofreedom, not price. You may ormay not pay a price to get GNU software. Either way, once you havethe software you have four specific freedoms in using it. The freedomto run the program as you wish; the freedom to copy the program andgive it away to your friends and co-workers; the freedom to change theprogram as you wish, by having full access to source code; the freedomto distribute an improved version and thus help build the community.(If you redistribute GNU software, you may charge a fee for thephysical act of transferring a copy, or you may give away copies.)
The project to develop the GNU system is called the “GNUProject.” The GNU Project was conceived in 1983 as a way ofbringing back the cooperative spirit that prevailed in the computingcommunity in earlier days—to make cooperation possible once again byremoving the obstacles to cooperation imposed by the owners ofproprietary software.
In 1971, when Richard Stallman started his career at MIT, he worked ina group which used freesoftware exclusively. Even computer companies often distributedfree software. Programmers were free to cooperate with each other,and often did.
By the 1980s, almost all software wasproprietary,which means that it had owners who forbid andprevent cooperation by users. This made the GNU Project necessary.
Every computer user needs an operating system; if there is no freeoperating system, then you can't even get started using a computerwithout resorting to proprietary software. So the first item on thefree software agenda obviously had to be a free operating system.
We decided to make the operating system compatible with Unix becausethe overall design was already proven and portable, and becausecompatibility makes it easy for Unix users to switch from Unix to GNU.
A Unix-like operating system includes a kernel, compilers, editors,text formatters, mail software, graphical interfaces, libraries, gamesand many other things. Thus, writing a whole operating system is avery large job. We started in January 1984.The Free Software Foundation wasfounded in October 1985, initially to raise funds to help developGNU.
By 1990 we had either found or written all the major componentsexcept one—the kernel. Then Linux, a Unix-like kernel, wasdeveloped by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and made free software in 1992.Combining Linux with the almost-complete GNU system resulted in acomplete operating system: the GNU/Linux system. Estimates are thattens of millions of people now use GNU/Linux systems, typicallyvia GNU/Linux distributions. The principalversion of Linux now contains nonfree firmware “blobs”;free software activists now maintain a modified free version of Linux,called Linux-libre.
However, the GNU Project is not limited to the core operating system.We aim to provide a whole spectrum of software, whatever many userswant to have. This includes application software. Seethe Free Software Directory for a catalogueof free software application programs.
We also want to provide software for users who are not computerexperts. Therefore we developed agraphical desktop (called GNOME) to helpbeginners use the GNU system.
We also want to provide games and other recreations. Plenty of free games arealready available.
How far can free software go? There are no limits, exceptwhen laws such asthe patent system prohibit free software. The ultimate goal is toprovide free software to do all of the jobs computer users want todo—and thus make proprietary software a thing of the past.
