From Chapter Four: The Unix and Open source Culture

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GNU

I had always heard that "GNU" was a recursive acronym for "Gnu's Not
Unix". It wasn't just me who thought that. For example, Eric Smith
used the same naming scheme for his Atari ST OS, called MiNT (Mint
is Not Tos), and credited GNU for coming up with the naming scheme.

I think the name "GNU" was a defiant statement against AT&T since
they had trademarked the Unix name, and Stallman was (and is)
against the restrictions of IP protections on software. My
interpretation of Stallman's intent may have been colored by what
Unix was at the time I heard about GNU (in college), but my own sense
of it was the fact that Unix had become commercialized, with closed
source, proprietary extensions motivated Stallman to forge ahead with
the GNU project to create a totally open source, free version of Unix,
just not calling it "Unix".

I remember wondering at the time whether Stallman had
accomplished his goal. All I saw were the utilities and system tools.
It's ironic that when it finally was accomplished (the history I heard
later was "all it needed was a kernel"), the name people remembered
was "Linux" (the name of the kernel for it), not GNU. I remember
seeing a few occasions were Stallman tried to get GNU back into the
lexicon, saying at every opportunity where he was interviewed, or had
an opportunity to get a letter published in a magazine, "The proper
name for it is GNU/Linux." But as best I can tell the "Linux" name
(minus "GNU") has stuck.

Posted by: Mark Miller   Posted on: 03/13/09  (Edited: 03/13/2009 @ 05:09) You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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