Bash is a Unix shell written for the GNU Project. Its name is an acronym for Bourne-again shell, a pun on the name of the Bourne shell (sh) (i.e. "Bourne again" or "born again"), an early an important Unix shell written by Stephen Bourne and distributed with Version 7 Unix circa 1978. Bash was created in 1987 by Brian Fox. In 1990 Chet Ramey became the primary maintainer.