GNU

<body, project> /g*noo/ 1. A recursive acronym: “GNU’s Not Unix!”.

The Free Software Foundation‘s project to provide a freely distributable replacement for Unix.

The GNU Manifesto was published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal but the GNU project started a year and a half earlier when Richard Stallman was trying to get funding to work on his freely distributable editor, Emacs.

Emacs and the GNU C compiler, gcc, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular.

GNU software is available from many GNU archive sites.

See also Hurd.

2. <person> John Gilmore.

[Jargon File]