The GNU hello program produces a familiar, friendly greeting. It allows non-programmers to use a classic computer science tool which would otherwise be unavailable to them.

Seriously, though: this is an example of how to do a Debian package. It is the Debian version of the GNU Project's `hello world' program (which is itself an example for the GNU Project).

This is the same as the hello package, except it does not use debhelper (hence the "traditional" suffix).