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Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation.

- Preface: About the GNU Coding Standards
- Intellectual Property: Keeping Free Software Free
- Design Advice: General Program Design
- Program Behavior: Program Behavior for All Programs
- Writing C: Making The Best Use of C
- Documentation: Documenting Programs
- Managing Releases: The Release Process

# About the GNU Coding Standards

The GNU Coding Standards were written by Richard Stallman and other GNU Project volunteers. Their purpose is to make the GNU system clean, consistent, and easy to install. This document can also be read as a guide to writing portable, robust and reliable programs. It focuses on programs written in C, but many of the rules and principles are useful even if you write in another programming language. The rules often state reasons for writing in a certain way.

Corrections or suggestions regarding this document should be sent to `gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu`. If you make a suggestion, please include a suggested new wording for it; our time is limited. We prefer a context diff to the ``standards.texi'` or ``make-stds.texi'` files, but if you don't have those files, please mail your suggestion anyway.

This release of the GNU Coding Standards was last updated 16 January 1997.

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