GNU Project

In order to ensure that the entire software of a computer grants its users all freedom rights (use, share, study, modify), even the most fundamental and important part, the operating system (including all its numerous utility programs) needed to be free software.

[7][8] The project's current work includes software development, awareness building, political campaigning, and sharing of new material.

Richard Stallman announced his intent to start coding the GNU Project in a Usenet message in September 1983.

[9] Despite never having used Unix prior, Stallman felt that it was the most appropriate system design to use as a basis for the GNU Project, as it was portable and "fairly clean".

[11] The GNU system required its own C compiler and tools to be free software, so these also had to be developed.

By June 1987, the project had accumulated and developed free software for an assembler, an almost finished portable optimizing C compiler (GCC), an editor (GNU Emacs), and various Unix utilities (such as ls, grep, awk, make and ld).

People could donate funds, computer parts, or even their own time to write code and programs for the project.

[4] The origins and development of most aspects of the GNU Project (and free software in general) are shared in a detailed narrative in the Emacs help system.

Although most of the GNU Project's output is technical in nature, it was launched as a social, ethical, and political initiative.

As well as producing software and licenses, the GNU Project has published a number of writings, the majority of which were authored by Richard Stallman.

Proceeds from Free Software Foundation associate members, purchases, and donations support the GNU Project.

The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation sometimes differentiate between "strong" and "weak" copyleft.

The list mostly describes distributions that are a combination of GNU packages with a Linux-libre kernel (a modified Linux kernel that removes binary blobs, obfuscated code, and portions of code under proprietary licenses) and consist only of free software (eschewing proprietary software entirely).

Eventually, the proprietary component that KDE depended on (Qt) was released as free software.

GNUe's goal is to create free "enterprise-class data-aware applications" (enterprise resource planners, etc.).

[43] In 2001, the GNU Project received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award for "the ubiquity, breadth, and quality of its freely available redistributable and modifiable software, which has enabled a generation of research and commercial development".