- published: 17 Mar 2013
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The GNU Project i/ɡəˈnuː/ is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984. The founding goal of the project was, in the words of its initial announcement, to develop "a sufficient body of free software [...] to get along without any software that is not free." To make this happen, the GNU Project began working on an operating system called GNU ("GNU" is a recursive acronym that stands for "GNU's Not Unix"). This goal of making a free software operating system was achieved in 1992 when the last gap in the GNU system, a kernel, was filled by the third-party Linux kernel being released as Free Software, under version 2 of the GNU GPL.
Current work of the GNU Project includes software development, awareness building, political campaigning and sharing of the new material.
When the GNU project first started they "had an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands, a source level debugger, a yacc-compatible parser generator, and a linker". They had an initial kernel that needed more updates. Once the kernel and the compiler were finished GNU was able to be used for program development. The main goal was to create many other applications to be like the Unix system. GNU was able to run Unix programs but was not identical to it. GNU incorporated longer file names, file version numbers, and a crashproof file system. The GNU Manifesto was written to gain support and participation from others for the project. Programmers were encouraged to take part in any aspect of the project that interested them. People could donate funds, computer parts, or even their own time to write code and programs for the project.
Richard Matthew Stallman (born 16 March 1953), often shortened to rms, is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and he has been the project's lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he initiated the free software movement; in October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation.
Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft, and he is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license. Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents, digital rights management, and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws. Stallman has also developed a number of pieces of widely used software, including the original Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, the GNU Debugger, and various tools in the GNU coreutils. He co-founded the League for Programming Freedom in 1989.
There's a house at the end of the road
It's got no windows and it's hard to see what is going on in there
There's a man and he asks you what you want
He's got no reason but you feel like you can't just ignore what he says
Imagine he's all you've got
Imagine he's all you've got
There's a house at the end of the road
It's got no windows and it's hard to make out what you just came here for
Catch the sun through the trees as you are walking
Through the garden
You've just got to get in before they close the door
Imagine he's all you've got
Imagine he's all you've got
Imagine this is all you have come across
Imagine she's all you've got
Imagine this is all you will ever have