No GNUs Is Good Gnews
An old children's show called The Great Space Coaster, as described by the Wikipedia article:
The Great Space Coaster is a children's television show that ran from 1981 through 1986. The series was directed by Dick Feldman, and distributed by Sunbow Productions.
The most memorable part of the show by far, for me at least, was a muppet-like character named Gary Gnu, who reported the "gnews":
A gnu newscaster who does a show each episode and is well known for his catchphrase, "No Gnews is Good Gnews with Gary...Gnu". He would add a guttural "g" sound to the beginning of any word he spoke which normally began with an "n", such as "gnews" for "news" and "gnaturally" for "naturally". Whenever introduced by either Goriddle Gorilla or Knock Knock, the introduction is always, "And Now For Something Really Gnew, Here's Gary Gnu." The only difference is that Goriddle always says "WOW!" each time he introduces Gary Gnu. Gary always begins by saying, "This Is Gary Gnu. And The No Gnews Is Good Gnews Show. The Only TV Gnews Program Guaranteed To Contain No Gnews Whatsoever." Gary's unusual speaking style was inspired by the 1957 Flanders and Swann song, The Gnu, which told the story of a gnu in a zoo who spoke much as Gary did, adding a "g" sound to the beginning of various words. Gary actually sang the song in one episode. Gary Gnu's gnewscasts were punctuated by comments and jeers from the filming crew. Occasionally he would be set up for a practical joke as the crew would call him a "turkey", followed by the dropping of a paper turkey (with Gary's picture taped over the face) onto Gnu's head, with a gobbling sound effect.
His catchphrase -- "No gnews is good gnews, with Gary . . . Gnu!" -- is what I most remember about him, of course. Apart from nostalgia, one of the reasons I remember Gary Gnu with such fondness is how well that catchphrase suits my opinion of GNU software:
- Copyfree vs Copyleft
- The Software Liberation Front
- Copyfree: Unfetter your ideas.
- Choose The Right Licensing Model For Security Software
- Security Tools Should Be Designed For Security
- GNU Is Not Unix
- Is Tmux The GNU Screen Killer?
- NetworkManager, The Fifth Horseman Of The Apocalinux
The first four links in that list don't lead to information specifically about the GNU Project, or GNU software, per se. They do, however, bear directly on issues related to the GNU Project's official preferred license, the GPL.
That last article isn't specifically about GNU software or the GNU Project, either. It is, however, about some software that is heavily influenced by the GNU Project, including anything related to GNOME, and it mentions the GNU Project as one of the first four "horsemen" (actually the first horseman). Anyway, the upshot is that I have a lot of reasons to dislike GNU software.
I'm working on a new article for TechRepublic about DRM -- which sucks, but the GNU Project's attitude toward it is asinine. That comes up in the article. I guess I'm not done writing about the failings of the GNU Project.
(Note: any linked articles on TechRepublic that contain code samples are likely to have completely screwed-up formatting thanks to CSS changes made since the articles were published.)