How does something become an official project under the umbrella of GNU, other than adopting a GPL? I'm guessing the FSF somehow curates and leads the individual efforts, before it can be called "GNU $THING"?
> other than adopting a GPL
Despite it's name, the GNU General Public License is a license for any software written by anyone. Licensing something under the GPL doesn't make your project a member of the GNU project, any more than licensing something with the MIT/X11 license make your project part of FreeDesktop, or BSD making your project one of Berkley's projects.
It appears that you write to FSF and write out an evaluation proposal.