Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/11/24/19:31:57
Peter Palotas writes:
>>I heard it is "GNU is Not Unix" or something like that.
>
>I can't understand what they mean with that, there must be another
>original meaning to GNU, right? What does the G in GNU stand for, it
>can't stand for GNU, can it!?
Why not? It is a recursive acronym, defined in terms of itself. I think
this is rather an appropriate name for the GNU project, since the
overall goal is to come up with a complete and self-contained computer
environment, which is itself a recursive task: you can't write the OS
until you have a compiler and development environment, but how do you
make those tools until you have an OS for them to run under?
According to the Hacker's Dictionary:
recursive acronym pl.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".
--
Shawn Hargreaves - shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/
"Pigs use it for a tambourine" - Frank Zappa
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