“GNOME is an acronym for GNU Object Model Environment. That by
itself doesn’t convey much information, though the GNU part (itself
an acronym for GNU’s Not Unix) is a tip-off that the GNOME Project
is part of the GNU Project. But more about GNU later. GNOME’s
fundamental goal is to make Unix and Unix-like operating systems
easier to use, especially free or open-source operating systems
such as Linux and the BSD variants – FreeBSD, OpenBSD and
NetBSD.”
“The key to GNOME (pronounced guh-nome) is that it strives to be
completely free: All of its components are distributed freely under
open-source licenses.”
“Ease of use for GNOME means the GNOME desktop, which offers
an easy-to-use, windows-based environment. It also means giving
programmers a development platform with a rich set of tools for
building powerful applications. Finally, it means building an
office-productivity application suite, GNOME Office.”