GNU

From ArticleWorld

GNU (GNU's Not Unix) is an Unix-like open-source operating system, containing no actual Unix code. Initially, the project was started by Richard Stallman in 1984, but the GNU project is notable more for its userland software than for its kernel, which is progressing very slowly.

History

The project was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. In 1984, Stallman resigned from MIT, so that MIT could not claim any form of copyright over the code. The goal of the GNU project was put on paper in an organized form in 1985, and published as the GNU Manifesto.

Much of the software had to be written from scratch, although the already existing components were used wherever possible (like the X Window System), In 1985, Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation, which also hired developers to write software, although its main purpose is to monitor and sustain the development of GNU software.

In time, GNU software also gained business interest, with several companies also entering the GNU game. Companies like Red Hat invested a lot in the GNU community, but obtained significant profit as well.

Much of the software written in the GNU project was released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a license that tries to guarantee the freedom to run, copy, modify and distribute software by forbidding the users to impose any further restrictions on the code.

The GNU operating system

GNU Hurd, the initial GNU operating system. is based on the Mach microkernel. The initial phase was enthusiastically conducted by the developers, who managed to write some excellent software, including a famous extensible text editor (emacs) and a powerful optimizing compiler (GCC). However, the development of GNU Hurd was slowed down considerably because of several disputes.

In 1992, the GNU project was refreshed as Linus Torvalds released Linux under the GNU GPL license. Along with much GNU software, several Linux distributions were created, bringing GNU under the spotlight.