What is GNU & GPL

    The name GNU stands for the recursive GNU's Not Unix,

    The GUN Project has already provided the software community with many applications that closely mimic those found on UNIX systems, All these programs, so-called GNU software, are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL); you can find a copy of the license at http://www.gnu.org. This license embodies the concept of copyleft (a takeoff on "copyright"). Copyleft is intended to prevent others placing restrictions on the use of free software.

    A few major examples of software from the GNU Project distributed under the GPL follow:

• GCC: The GNU Compiler Collection, containing the GNU C compiler;
• G++: A C++ compiler, included as part of GCC;
• GDB: A source code-level debugger;
• GNU make: A version of UNIX make;
• Bison: A parser generator compatible with UNIX yacc;
• bash: A command shell;
• Gnu Emacs: A text editor and environment;