Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:19:35 -0400 From: Tom Embt <tom@embt.com> To: the_hermit665@hotmail.com Cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cron GNU??? Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19991019121935.00b5c1e8@mail.embt.com> In-Reply-To: <19991019160446.63929.qmail@hotmail.com>
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>
>I guess it's just another "Stupid Acronym" among the rest. WTF does GNU
>stand for??? I know GNU is "GNU's not unix" or "GNU not unix"?? But what
>does the "GNU" in "GNU's not unix" stand for?? (Here's a reall good one for
>ya .... any takers?????.)
>
>-cosmic-665
>
From 'The Jargon Lexicon', "The New Hacker's Dictionary"
GNU /gnoo/, not /noo/
1. [acronym: `GNU's Not Unix!', see recursive acronym] A Unix-workalike
development effort of the Free Software Foundation headed by Richard Stallman
<rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. 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. See EMACS, copyleft, General Public Virus, Linux. 2. Noted Unix
hacker John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, founder of Usenet's anarchic alt.*
hierarchy.
recursive acronym n.
A hackish (and especially MIT) tradition is to choose acronyms/abbreviations
that refer humorously to themselves or to other acronyms/abbreviations. The
classic examples were two MIT editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and
ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). More recently, there is a Scheme compiler
called LIAR (Liar Imitates Apply Recursively), and GNU (q.v., sense 1) stands
for "GNU's Not Unix!" -- and a company with the name Cygnus, which expands to
"Cygnus, Your GNU Support" (though Cygnus people say this is a backronym). See
also mung, EMACS.
word wrapped by yours truly,
Tom Embt
tom@embt.com
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