1. [acronym: ‘GNU’s Not Unix!', see recursive acronym] A Unix-workalike development effort of the Free
Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman. 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.
The GNU project has a web page at http://www.gnu.org/. See
EMACS, copyleft,
General Public Virus, Linux.
2. Noted Unix hacker John Gilmore gnu@toad.com}, founder of Usenet's anarchic alt.* hierarchy.