Cygnus Solutions
Encyclopedia
Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann
Michael Tiemann is Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat Inc, as well as President of the Open Source Initiative. He previously was the Chief Technical Officer of Red Hat...

 and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

. Its tagline was: Making free software affordable.

For years, employees of Cygnus Solutions were the maintainers of several key GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...

 software products, including the GNU Debugger
GNU Debugger
The GNU Debugger, usually called just GDB and named gdb as an executable file, is the standard debugger for the GNU software system. It is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Java...

 and GNU Binutils (which included the GNU Assembler
GNU Assembler
The GNU Assembler, commonly known as GAS , is the assembler used by the GNU Project. It is the default back-end of GCC. It is used to assemble the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel, and various other software. It is a part of the GNU Binutils package.GAS' executable is named after as, a...

 and Linker). It was also a major contributor to the GCC
GNU Compiler Collection
The GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages. GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain...

 project and drove the change in the project's management from having a single gatekeeper to having an independent committee. Cygnus developed BFD, and used it to help port GNU to many architectures, in a number of cases working under non-disclosure
Non-disclosure agreement
A non-disclosure agreement , also known as a confidentiality agreement , confidential disclosure agreement , proprietary information agreement , or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties...

 to produce tools used for initial bringup of software for a new chip design.

Cygnus was also the original developer of Cygwin
Cygwin
Cygwin is a Unix-like environment and command-line interface for Microsoft Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications, data, and other system resources with applications, software tools, and data of the Unix-like environment...

, a POSIX
POSIX
POSIX , an acronym for "Portable Operating System Interface", is a family of standards specified by the IEEE for maintaining compatibility between operating systems...

 layer and the GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...

 toolkit port to the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 family, and of eCos
ECos
eCos is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs...

, an embedded real-time operating system
Real-time operating system
A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...

.

In the 2001 documentary film Revolution OS
Revolution OS
Revolution OS is a 2001 documentary film that traces the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source, and the free software movement.Directed by J. T. S. Moore, the film features interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds,...

, Tiemann indicates that the name "Cygnus" was chosen from among several names that incorporated the acronym "GNU".

On November 15, 1999, Cygnus Solutions announced its merger with Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

, and ceased to exist as a separate company in early 2000. , a number of Cygnus employees continue to work for Red Hat, including Tiemann, who serves as Red Hat's Vice President of Open Source Affairs, and formerly served as CTO. Red Hat did not retain the trademark to Cygnus Solutions, nor the cygnus.com domain.
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