/g*noo/ 1. A recursive acronym: "GNU' s Not UNIx!". The Free Software Foundation' s project to provide a freely distributable replacement for UNIx. The GNU Manifesto was published in the March 1985 issue of Dr. Dobb' s Journal but the GNU project started a year and a half earlier when Richard Stallman was trying to get funding to work on his freely distributable editor, Emacs. Emacs and the GNU C compiler, gcc, two tools designed for this project, have become very popular. GNU software is available from many GNU archive sites. See also Hurd. 2. John Gilmore. [Jargon File] (1997-04-12)