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GNU Garry Shandling
Oh, not the comedian? Well that was my fault then. I didn't know there was another. I just saw his name on a list.
No, it was definitely him. I was just paying tribute to him as an aficionado of a democratizing system of long range communication.
The GNU thing is a reference to author Terry Pratchett, who wrote about a democratizing system of long range communication similar to the telegraph but with semaphore towers, called the "clacks" (because of the clacking sounds the semaphore flags made when they moved). Each clacks tower was in visual range of another clacks tower, and each one was manned by an operator who would read the incoming message and then send the same message on to the next tower in the line until the message reached the intended destination. This system is one of the main subplots in the book "Going Postal", which is a critique of unchecked capitalism, corporate greed and privatization of profit over public service and worker safety.
In the book, the clacks system is the victim of a hostile takeover by a rich capitalist named Reacher Gilt, who either directly via one of his agents (similar to the Pinkertons), or indirectly via cost-cutting that leads to safety issues, murders/kills the creator and previous owner of the clacks system, John Dearheart.
After his death, clacks operators up and down the line of towers memorialize him with the message "GNU John Dearheart", which was inserted into the "overhead" of the messages (also literally over their heads in the towers), which were sent in every single clacks message on all lines as additional information for operators about the message.
"G" meant "send the message on" "N" meant "do not log the message" "U" meant "at the end of the line, turn the message around"
In the book, the reason they did this is because "A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken".
When Pratchett himself died, GNU Terry Pratchett became a thing as a way for fans to remember him. Some even created the "X-Clacks-Overhead" code, which can be inserted into the header of websites as a tribute to those who should not be forgotten.
So GNU Terry Pratchett and GNU Garry Shandling.
Gotcha! Thanks!