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@ -12,7 +12,11 @@ Although GNU is great and has been one of the best things to happen in software
## History
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The project officially started on September 27, 1983 by [Richard Stallman](rms.md)'s announcement titled *Free Unix!*. In it he expresses the intent to create a [free as in freedom](free_software.md) clone of the operating system [Unix](unix.md), and calls for people to join his effort (he also uses the term free software here). Unix was a good, successful de-facto standard operating system, but it was proprietary, owned by AT&T, and as such restricted by licensing terms. GNU was to be a similar system, compatible with the original Unix, but free as in freedom, i.e. freely available and allowing anyone to use it, improve it and share it.
In 1985 Richard Stallman wrote the GNU Manifesto, similar to the original project announcement, which further promoted the project and asked people for help in development. At this point the GNU team already had a lot of software for the new system: a text editor Emacs, a debugger, a number of utility programs and a nearly finished shell and [C](c.md) compiler ([gcc](gcc.md)).
At this point each program of the project still had its own custom license that legally made the software free as in freedom. The differences in details of these licenses however caused issues such as legal incompatibilities. This was addressed in 1989 by Richard Stallman's creation of a universal free software license: GNU General Public License ([GPL](gpl.md)) version 1. This license can be used for any free software project and makes these projects legally compatible, while also utilizing so called [copyleft](copyleft.md): a requirement for derived works to keep the same license, i.e. a legal mechanism for preventing people from making copies of a free project non-free. Since then GPL has become the primary license of the GNU project as well as of other unrelated projects.
## GNU Projects