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Re: [LUG] I can't believe it!

 

On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:08:54 +0000
Rob Beard wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> My other half was doing a crossword, one of the questions was a 3 letter 
> word and the clue was wildebeest.  The answer was GNU.  I thought, hang 
> on, GNU means GNU's Not Unix, and it's the foundation for a complete 
> operating system, what has that got to do with wildebeest?
> 
> I did a Google search for GNU + wildebeest and found that a GNU is 
> actually a type of wildebeest.  That'll explain the GNU logo then (and 
> GNU Herd).  You can see what I'm on about here: 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildebeest
> 
> I'm not sure if any of you folks knew this.  I always used to think, how 
> did they come up with GNU's Not Unix, I mean how did they think of GNU?
> 
> As you can probably guess, I didn't know a GNU was a wildebeest.  I 
> dunno, been using GNU/Linux on and off for about 15 years or so and I've 
> never know this in all that time.  I'll hang my head in shame!
> 
> Rob
> 
Oh Rob, Rob, Rob... so you should.  Go read "Free as in Freedom" 
(http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/) and you'll learn (IIRC) that originally 
Monsieur Stallman wanted to have a natural-English 4 letter word ending in INU ("Is 
Not Unix") but found that (at the time) no such word existed, so he settled for GNU, 
standing for "GNU's Not Unix".

Quite apart from that it is (IMO) a damn good read.

Grant. :)

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