GNU

Presentation

Its name is a recursive Acronyme which means in English " Gnu' S Not Unix " (literally, GNU is not UNIX ) in reference on the one hand to its similarity or rather its dealings or its dealings (hooked atoms, relationship) with UNIX and on the other hand with its will to escape any pressure from the " propriétaires" of UNIX.

At the beginning of the creation of GNU, the operating system UNIX was already largely widespread and its architecture considered as sufficiently robust by the academics and the engineers. GNU was thus conceived to be compatible with this system but was different from it by the absence from any source code from Unix origin, in order to create a free equivalent of it in particular.

GNU was founded and created by Richard Stallman following his dissension with the licenses of Berkeley, and constituted the main objective of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

The licenses GNU LPG, GNU LGPL and GNU FDL were written for GNU but however make parts of dissociated projects.

The symbol of GNU is a Gnou; the logo was drawn by Etienne Suvasa.

Origin

The Projet GNU is launched by Richard Stallman in 1984, whereas he worked at the laboratory of Artificial intelligence of the MIT, in order to create a free Operating system and complete and, according to its words, “to bring back the spirit of co-operation which prevailed in the data-processing community in the old days” (he was not question then of intellectual property, and all the source codes, distinct, were exchanged freely, according to him thus).

One cannot really include/understand what is project GNU if one neglects his motivations of them, concerned with ethics and political philosophy. It indeed aims at not letting the man become neither the slave of the machine and those which would have the exclusiveness in its programming, nor of Cartel S monopolizing of knowledge according to their only interests. Project GNU works for a free diffusion of knowledge, which is not without implications political, ethical, philosophical and social, or sociétales.

The programs available in agreement with project GNU are called the packages GNU or the programs GNU . Among the basic components of the system, one finds: the collection of compilers GNU (GCC), the binary tools GNU (binutils), Shell Bash, the library C GNU (glibc), and the basic tools GNU (coreutils).

History of System GNU

In 1985, Stallman creates the Free Software Foundation, structure logistic, legal and financial of project GNU. The FSF also finances developers to contribute to the project, a substantial proportion of the software and documents (and being still) having been realized by the voluntary ones. For this reason, of the communities university or scientific, American, and international, contribute enormously to the viability of these projects.

Whereas the reputation of GNU grew, of the interested companies started either to contribute to the development, or to resell the software of project GNU and to offer customer support. The principal one of these companies is Cygnus Solutions, which forms now part of Red Hat.

Starting from 1990, system GNU has its own text editor (Emacs), very powerful compiler (GCC), and majority of the libraries system of a distribution Unix standard. The main component still lack being the core.

In January 2004, UNESCO registered like " Treasury of the monde" project GNU.

GNU is always in 2007 under development, because its official core, GNU Hurd remains incomplete and the whole of components GNU are not compatible with this last. For this reason, the majority of the users of GNU use the third core Linux. Although Linux was not adopted as being the official core of GNU, this last integrates officially certain third software such as the implementation X.Org of the Système of fenestration X and the system of typography TeX. Many programs were also carried for other operating systems like Microsoft Windows, the alternatives BSD, Solaris and Mac OS.

Where the GNU is

Complete systems

System GNU includes/understands programs which are not software GNU, in fact programs was developed by others, within the framework of other projects, for their own goals, but that one can re-use, because they are free software. Projected the operating system GNU, with the core Hurd, remains a project (although the majority of the system are functional for the developers and users). One can however discover it in symbiosis with related projects (like Debian), or competitor of a part (like Linux). The distribution Debian GNU/Linux belongs to those which approach some more, but certain important points of the original philosophy of GNU (as the absence of right reserved to a privileged user) are not representative (???).

GNU and the Linux core

The association of project GNU with the Noyau Linux occurs naturally when the core is available and perfectly functional in environment GNU. Project GNU had envisaged the development of the core Hurd to supplement the system, but at the beginning of the Années 1990, Hurd did not function yet and its development still encountered difficulties.

The arrival of the Linux core thus made available the software of project GNU on the computers animated by Microprocesseur S of the family Intel X86. That ensured a broad diffusion to them because these projects were complementary with wonder. (?)

The whole of the distributions Linux carry the print more or less present of project GNU (would be this only in their licenses), from where name distribution GNU/Linux defended by Richard Stallman.

Nonfree software associated with system GNU

One finds many elements which always do not correspond to the criteria of the free software associated with distributions, on the basis of system GNU. Most famous are the library Qt office KDE and the algorithm of compression of the images GIF, all two become free since.

The nonfree elements most usually added are the software which makes it possible to make function certain parts of the computer (drivers of certain graphics cards and wifi especially); and of the software of reading of format owner (DVD, Divx, MP3, Flash, etc).

They go against logics which led to the creation of GNU since they return the system, taken in its globality, nonfree. (For example, it is not legal to copy or diffuse a system which integrates the Flash reader since this last remainder the property of Adobe Systems). One in addition realizes of the implication of a " GNU pur" of this fact.

Compatibility of philosophy

The distributions completely compatible with the basic principles of GNU are very few. One can quote the following ones: (indexed by FSF):

Distribution GNU/Linux conforms to principles GNU:

GNewSense, based on Debian and Ubuntu with the support of the FSF.
Ututo, based on Gentoo. The first GNU/Linux system recognized by project GNU.
Dynebolic, audio and video creation.
Musix based on Knoppix, especially adapted to the audio production.
BLAG, BLAG Linux and GNU , based on Fedora.
GNUstep

Other compatible distribution at the ethical level:

FreeDOS, free version of DOS.
GNU Darwin, GNU+ Darwin
ReactOS, free version of Windows NT (not yet functional)
Amiga Research Operating System, free version of AmigaOS 3.1

Elements of the project

Per unit of projects, one can more clearly identify those which are affiliated with GNU, like the graphic environment GNOME including the software of Retouche of image The GIMP.

But most of the programs resulting from project GNU are elements of creation, installation or operation which are not always identifiable by the end user (?), for example:

Bash : Interpreter of order UNIX
Bison: Parser (parser) during Yacc
Classpath: Libraries for the support of the language Java
Flex: Implementation GNU of the lexical analyzer Lex
Gdb: The official debugger of GNU
Glibc: Standard library POSIX C
Gnash: Visual display of animations Flash
GNU To assemble (Gas): Assembler GNU
GNU To compile Collection (GCC): The collection of compilers GNU
GNU Emacs: The plethora of functionalities pushes the malicious gossip to be said: “It is not a text editor, it is not an operating system, it is Emacs! ”
GNU Screen: Allows to open several windows in the same console, them to detach and réattacher at will
Gnuzilla: Software continuation Internet
GNUstep: Tally of work and graphic environment
GRUB: A charger of starting
Gsl: Library of scientific computational tools
GTK+: Library
Gzip: Library and program of compression
IceWeasel: Free navigator Web
IceDove: Free customer of transport
IceApe: Free continuation Internet
Hurd: The “core”
PhpGroupWare: Software continuation of Groupware (synergiciel)
Wget: Tool of remote loading of file/aspiration of site

See too

Distribution linux
Core Linux
Hurd
Free software
public License general GNU
List of packages GNU

External bonds

Official site
French Translation of philosophy GNU
the project GNU, explanation by Richard Stallman.
All programs belonging to system GNU

References

Random links: