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Debian Wheezy - Linux kernel, GNU tools, 100% of software compiled for i386/64.
Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 - Hurd kernel, GNU tools, 75% of software compiled for i386/64 (I'm ready to assume it doesn't have support for other platforms but might be wrong).

i386 != x86_64. Hurd is 32-bit only, according to the FAQ.

There are probably no inherent benefits to using Hurd over Linux - and there are certainly many reasons for picking Linux over Hurd, support being just one of them.

At this stage of Hurd's development, parent is correct. For daily desktop use, Linux is clearly mature enough and Hurd is very probably not.

From the perspective of design, Hurd has some good ideas, as the GNU Web site explains. My favorite is:

the Hurd goes one step further in that most of the components that constitute the whole kernel are running as separate user-space processes and are thus using different address spaces that are isolated from each other. This is a multi-server design based on a microkernel. It is not possible that a faulty memory dereference inside the TCP/IP stack can bring down the whole kernel, and thus the whole system, which is a real problem in a monolothic Unix kernel architecture.

So there are design features of the Hurd that make it attractive to developers. I can foresee the Hurd maturing to the point where embedded device makers would seriously consider it, for example.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

The publisher should just be suing them without an expensive police raid paid for by the taxpayer.

No, the timeline doesn't work like that, but it's all playing out as Stallman warned in The Right to Read (February 1997, Communications of the ACM).

If you use Linux, and other open source software, you can do a lot of learning and paid work in the software industry without having to pay expensive licences - while still being strictly legal!

word processor & other office software:
http://www.libreoffice.org/

database:
http://www.postgresql.org/

compilers:
http://gcc.gnu.org/

operating system & sufficient software to do useful things (2 of over 100 offerings, pick one that suites you best!):
https://fedoraproject.org/
http://www.debian.org/

network diagnostic:
http://www.wireshark.org/ ... and many others ...

I don't agree with him on a lot of things but credit where credit is due

DRM'ed textbooks...more and more it looks like we're headed for the world RMS envisioned in The Right To Read.

Car analogy - what solution is preferable for someone to learn driving: use a second-hand car or rent a car by the day?

The better car analogy is the guy who likes to lease a new car every 3 years instead of buying one. You always get to have a new car, and there are rarely ever maintenance costs. The same would probably be true for the software subscription where you will automatically get the newest upgrades for free as part of the subscription.

Not quite. With an offline version, one can buy a "second hand" install CD. With an "only for rental" offer on the market, there's no chance to do it.

Think textbooks

Totally with you, and here's the quote you're looking for:

"Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel. People who erroneously think "Linux" refers to the entire GNU/Linux combination get tied in knots by these facts, and make paradoxical statements such as "Android contains Linux, but it isn't Linux". If we avoid starting from the confusion, the situation is simple: Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different."

Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html

Then DON'T BUY THEM. No one has forced you at gunpoint to use iTunes.

Countries do force their citizens at gunpoint to file income tax returns. Some of these countries require that tax returns be filed electronically using software that runs only on Windows.

Tablets, mobile phones and other minicomputers are sold with numerous restrictions embedded that cripple users freedom.

THEN DON'T BUY THEM. Buy a Linux laptop instead.

Good luck making a telephone call from a Linux laptop.

Then use a LANDLINE. No one has forced you at gunpoint to use a cell phone. Good luck playing angry birds on a 1950s desk telephone.

protect our IP

To protect your Internet Protocol address, use a firewall. For other meanings of "IP", see "Seductive Mirage".

Don't be an asshole. You are perfectly capable of disambiguating which definition of IP I meant. For other meanings of asshole, see "teppies AT gmail DOT com"

The "Seductive Mirage" you speak of has garnered me a net worth of over $5 million US dollars. I think the real mirage is the illusion that slashdot people have that DRM and Intellectual Property is of no value to anyone simply because you find it annoying. You all can have your little debate about it while I laugh all the way to the bank.

How has nobody pointed out yet that DRM stands for Digital Rights Management?

As you correctly guessed, whoosh. To understand why you whooshed, ask yourself whose "rights" DRM protects. Then see Words to Avoid to see why DRM opponents expand the R to "restrictions".

Ask yourself whose digital rights are being Managed!

I will probably never buy another Nook. Quite a few Barnes & Noble books I've purchased were supplied DRM-free by the publishers (thank YOU O'Reilly, Baen and Tor!) Nevertheless, I cannot keep backup copies of them in the event that B&N shuts down their servers, because all of the later Nook models hide their book storage in a private space that is apparently inaccessible even when rooted.

In other words, the publisher granted me certain rights, the seller (who doesn't actually even own the copyrights) takes some of those rights away. The only way to avoid that is to bypass the B&N store and download the books to the Gulag file store, because the original My books/Nook Books conveniences were not carried over to any of the later Nook models.

Then DON'T BUY THEM. No one has forced you at gunpoint to use iTunes.

Countries do force their citizens at gunpoint to file income tax returns. Some of these countries require that tax returns be filed electronically using software that runs only on Windows.

Tablets, mobile phones and other minicomputers are sold with numerous restrictions embedded that cripple users freedom.

THEN DON'T BUY THEM. Buy a Linux laptop instead.

Good luck making a telephone call from a Linux laptop.

protect our IP

To protect your Internet Protocol address, use a firewall. For other meanings of "IP", see "Seductive Mirage".

How has nobody pointed out yet that DRM stands for Digital Rights Management?

As you correctly guessed, whoosh. To understand why you whooshed, ask yourself whose "rights" DRM protects. Then see Words to Avoid to see why DRM opponents expand the R to "restrictions".

Always the visionary:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

This thing will be supported as long as there is one old hacker that has one and doesnt like to replace a working part.

First, a USB device is designed to be easily replaceable. Second, imagine that we have open sourced design of Pentium II. How much interest would that generate? In just a year or two it might be hard to find a hacker who'd want to deal with obsolete stuff - and WiFi stuff gets obsolete faster than you can put the credit card back into the wallet.

It is certainly possible that someone, somewhere, buys a COTS consumer-level part, sticks it into the server, and then 10 years later is unwilling to replace the whole module when it fails. But that's what people deal with every single day in the industry and elsewhere - things fail and they need replacement. I would be far more concerned that the hardware of this dongle fails 10 years later - where would you get a replacement then?

This whole approach appeals to too few people. Most are pragmatists. A pragmatic approach means that when the thing fails, there will be money and resources to replace whatever needs replacement. If no money is available, then I guess the project is not that important, after all.

I do not know what business would be attracted by this specific dongle just on the basis that it is documented. This whole concept is way above the pay grade of pretty much everyone who works in IT. It is not even feasible, in most cases, for an IT guy to start a science project to debug a problematic device. This is handled by simple replacement of what doesn't work. This method offers fixed and predictable duration of repair. Hacking a driver, on a live system ... well, there are crazier things to do, but not too many.

There is only one useful function that is directly fulfilled by this product - and that is creation of completely free computing systems. Days are coming (perhaps not tomorrow, but who knows?) when RMS's dark prophecy materializes in laws and COTS hardware like WinRT, that denies you, the owner, the right to use the equipment as you see fit. There are F/OSS designs of the CPU and other key blocks already. This is another addition to the collection. Perhaps the hardware will be obsoleted and not available anymore (quite soon, actually, considering that every new IC has about 6 to 9 months on the market before it is obsoleted and replaced with something else.) But the principles of operation may be useful if one wants to build a free computing system.

This function - a free computer - is very important. However, just as nearly all things that are good for the society (and the soul,) there is very little financial reward for doing good deeds. I understand pretty well how much labor went into development of the hardware, MCU software, and the PC software to make the thing work. I do some of that, now and then, for living. This is a good thing to do; but expect no monetary reward. The cost of the device is high, and only a handful of devotees will invest. (There are many devotees, but not too many will support F/OSS by buying the device.) I, for one, simply have no need for such a product - all my computers have built-in WiFi, not that I use it much anyway. Cable is more reliable, and has no interference from neighbors, and nosy Google cannot intercept it easily.

Game designs are not protected by copyright

The Tetris Company successfully sued the developer of another game with the same rules. Is Emacs next?

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html

As someone who writes some commercial software it is NOT true of the GPL3. It is true of the LGPL - which is why the FSF is trying to get rid of it.

The FSF is not trying to get rid of the LGPL. RMS says:

Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library.

You can get around that problem by insisting that copyright over their contributed code falls to you when they submit it. That is what the FSF does with their code. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#AssignCopyright

Clang supports every backend that llvm does. What it doesn't do is automaticity find all the libraries and header files that are standard for a plat form. But you can specify any target that llvm supports.

GCC doesn't support all those targets because they need to be explicitly included in at compile time.

By "targets" do you mean "instruction set architectures" or "ISA version + OS"?

And by "support" do you mean "if you build GCC it automatically includes support for all those targets without having to configure them in" or do you mean "allows support for that target to be compiled in"? If you mean the former of those two definitions of "support", that's not generally what "support" means in this context; if you mean the latter, well, which of "X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore" aren't supported? On the host/target specific installation notes for GCC page, I don't see any explicit mention of Thumb, CellSPU, MSP430, or XCore ("SystemZ", i.e. z/Architecture or "64-bit System/3x0", is called "s390x" on that page), although the ARM options page for GCC mentions Thumb; I see references on the Web to an "mspgcc" project for the MSP430, but it's not part of the GCC release, and I see mentions of an "spu-gcc", but nothing about Xcore.

Clang supports every backend that llvm does. What it doesn't do is automaticity find all the libraries and header files that are standard for a plat form. But you can specify any target that llvm supports.

GCC doesn't support all those targets because they need to be explicitly included in at compile time.

By "targets" do you mean "instruction set architectures" or "ISA version + OS"?

And by "support" do you mean "if you build GCC it automatically includes support for all those targets without having to configure them in" or do you mean "allows support for that target to be compiled in"? If you mean the former of those two definitions of "support", that's not generally what "support" means in this context; if you mean the latter, well, which of "X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore" aren't supported? On the host/target specific installation notes for GCC page, I don't see any explicit mention of Thumb, CellSPU, MSP430, or XCore ("SystemZ", i.e. z/Architecture or "64-bit System/3x0", is called "s390x" on that page), although the ARM options page for GCC mentions Thumb; I see references on the Web to an "mspgcc" project for the MSP430, but it's not part of the GCC release, and I see mentions of an "spu-gcc", but nothing about Xcore.

Calling into the kernel code every allocation / deallocation of dynamic memory is slow.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to download the glib source code and trawl around. Pick the latest code, or whatever you interact with on a daily basis. Check out the malloc code, it's not as daunting as it sounds. You should discover a few things:

• If your malloc size is big enough to trigger a mmap (128KB IIRC), then you are absolutely correct that the runtime library will invoke the OS on every allocation/deallocation. Until you hit your number-of-maps limit, at least. So yeah, repeated allocation and deallocation of large blocks of memory is bad in this implementation. But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater! mallopt can be used to tune the allocator to your program's expected behavior. As in: short-lived block sizes should probably be below the mmap threshold.
• If you don't trigger the mmap size threshold, then the allocator only goes to the OS if it needs to increase the size of the heap. Again, this behavior is tunable: how much to pull from the OS at once, and how much overhead to allow before returning space back to the OS.

If you're not writing software with high performance requirements, you can probably ignore all of this, because your program's bottlenecks are probably somewhere silly (and nobody cares, anyhow). If you are, this level of control is probably desirable whether you're using GC or deterministic deallocation.

eh, gcc doesn't even follow C99, it's a half-assed C89

Are there any issues other than those mentioned in the GCC developers' status of C99 features in GCC page?

with all kinds of weird extension

Well, yes, if you specify --std=c99, "When a base standard is specified, the compiler accepts all programs following that standard plus those using GNU extensions that do not contradict it." You'd need -Wpedantic to get warnings about all GNU extensions and -pedantic-errors to get them as errors.

eh, gcc doesn't even follow C99, it's a half-assed C89

Are there any issues other than those mentioned in the GCC developers' status of C99 features in GCC page?

with all kinds of weird extension

Well, yes, if you specify --std=c99, "When a base standard is specified, the compiler accepts all programs following that standard plus those using GNU extensions that do not contradict it." You'd need -Wpedantic to get warnings about all GNU extensions and -pedantic-errors to get them as errors.

The standard specifies compiler behavior and the run-time library behavior. I know GCC has been pretty up to date with respect to the language features, but there are still some "Partial" and "No" entries in the run-time library implementation's C++11 status. Is Clang's library implementation complete with respect to the C++11 standard?

Apple, and to a large extent Google, have come with new business models where they take the output of that process and rebundle it in a way which allows them to avoid sharing the key features which differentiate their products.

Um what? Clang is open source. WebKit was open sourced by Apple. Under the GPL they are only obligated to release modifications to the original KHTML base code. They are under no obiligations to release JavascriptCore or WebCore but they did. Apple didn't have to hire Michael Sweet and have him keep developing cups.

In Apple's case by adding proprietary GUIs and other features which mean that nobody else can the free stuff and compete with them.

It means you can't use their stuff which they want to keep proprietary. But you are free to compete to develop your own. Also under the BSD license which OS X is derived, Apple doesn't even have to release Darwin but they do.

LLVM is one of their key tools in trying to leverage that. This is done for profit, mostly by taking money out of the pockets of people like Slashdotters. It is a tool in ensuring they will be able to build developer environments where they take your source code and hide it from you.

Again, what? Clang is open source and Apple is a major contributor. LLVM is open source and Apple is a major contributor. LLVM was released under a BSD style license long before Apple was a contributor.

It is not a coincidence that we keep getting stories about there being lots of non-GPL software coming out etc. The shills want us to give them everything we have for free and have no need to return to the community.

Again, what? Do you even look at this page?

Correct answer: License under the AGPLv3 whenever you can and only back off to the GPL or LGPL, let alone MIT licenses when someone gives you a really compelling benefit for doing so.

And who are you to dictate to the authors what license they pick? LLVM picked a BSD license long before Apple was involved. NeXT used the same type of license long before Apple purchased them. Apple cannot change the license differently than the authors intended.

What makes you think it has anything to do with generosity?

Assuming he's not a shill (in which case the answer would be his pay check), propaganda, stupidity and things like ESR's essay saying that the GPL is no longer needed.

For a time, up to a few years ago it looked like programmers could become truly independent of the companies they work directly for, a bit like graphic artists, shop keepers, SAP specialists and so on. The basis of this would be that most companies would use the same FOSS software, sharing that from company to company. The vast efficiency gain would have been shared between the (no longer) customers of big IT companies like Microsoft and the programmers. Software would start to advance at the rate that benefitted its users, not the people stealing from them.

Apple, and to a large extent Google, have come with new business models where they take the output of that process and rebundle it in a way which allows them to avoid sharing the key features which differentiate their products. In Google's case by keeping the most important bits on servers where you can't access it. In Apple's case by adding proprietary GUIs and other features which mean that nobody else can the free stuff and compete with them.

LLVM is one of their key tools in trying to leverage that. This is done for profit, mostly by taking money out of the pockets of people like Slashdotters. It is a tool in ensuring they will be able to build developer environments where they take your source code and hide it from you. It is not a coincidence that we keep getting stories about there being lots of non-GPL software coming out etc. The shills want us to give them everything we have for free and have no need to return to the community.

Correct answer: License under the AGPLv3 whenever you can and only back off to the GPL or LGPL, let alone MIT licenses when someone gives you a really compelling benefit for doing so.

Are you suffering from a lack of google? ;) GNU Scientific Library is GPL: http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/ [gnu.org]
The page also has a link to an RMS essay about how free software developers should prevent proprietary developers from using their software in order for the GPL software developers to get a collective advantage for themselves. (BTW, it sounds to me like RMS doesn't intend for proprietary developers to wrap the GSL in IPC.)

There's no reason why software should be free, anymore so than anything else. Since nothing else free, we need to stop giving away our labor.

Thank you for demonstrating your complete misunderstanding of the term "Free Software". I'd provide a link to help you, but suspect you don't care to remedy your ignorance.

In other words: this generation doesn't care for limiting other developers' choices in development in the way Stallman wanted. They prefer to just give away the code instead of forcing everyone who uses it to open their own work. Good for this generation, I'd say. They've seen the outcome of a "GPL-only" world, and they didn't like it.

Or maybe they're tired of license confusion?

You can have two codebases that are "GPL" but which cannot be mixed together because they violate the GPL.

Yes, you can end up in this situation very easily, because GPLv2 is not compatible with GPLv3. You can combine GPLv2+ code with GPLv3 code (producing a GPLv3 work), GPLv2+ with GPLv3+ (producing GPLv3+ work), but NOT GPLv2 and GPLv3 because GPLv3 contains clauses that violate other clauses in GPLv2.

Anyone with a reasonably large codebase has to re-verify that there is no GPLv2 code in there before moving over to GPLv3.

Of course, there's also a chance that they're doing it because companies are scared of GPLv3 - I've seen companies enforce open-source policies because of GPLv3 where you're not allowed to use any GPL'd code - whether it's for internal use only or distribution without engaging lawyers and all that stuff.

Of course, things like Android have also helped raise the profile of alternative open-source licenses - I'm sure a lot of GPL'd projects used the GPL because that's all they knew - that all FOSS software was GPL'd.

(And for the record, I tend to use a mix of BSD, MIT and GPLv2 (not v2+ or v3) for my code. Heck, you can even use unmodified BSD (the GPL-incompatible one)).

Has the younger generation given up on ideas like copyleft and Free Software?

Hopefully. And no, nothing needs to be done about it. There isn't anything particularly good about the GPL. It isn't bad (usually), it just isn't that great.

It doesn't prevent proprietary forks.

It violates KISS, a cherished engineering principle.

It is wrought with comlicated incompatibilities with other reasonable open source licenses and with other versions of itself. In this case, the GPL really is bad (i.e. counter-productive).

It tries to solve a problem that doesn't really exist; many companies actively contribute to non-copyleft projects without any mandate from RMS.

It doesn't even support the ideals of the Four Freedoms any better than other licenses. A company that owns the copyright of a GPL project can make it closed-source just as easily as if it had any other license, and a non-GPL project can be forked just as easily as a GPL project if that happens.

The GPL often gets credit for the success of a few great open source projects, especially the Linux kernel. However, the role of the GPL in those projects' success is far from clear, and it certainly discounts those projects; the kernel really is a quality project regardless of licensing terms. It could also be said that those projects were successful despite the GPL. It would be difficult to prove either way.

I'm glad for RMS. He has done a lot of good with GNU software, especially GCC. The GPL just really isn't one of his better accomplishments.

Actually, even RMS refers to the BSD and Apache licenses as "GPL-compatible free software". So the GPL and other two popular licenses, BSD and Apache, are all free software by the Free Software Definition. The difference is that GPL is a copyleft license and the Apache and BSD licenses aren't.

Why are the Apache and BSD licenses becoming more popular than the GPL? Because free software has grown up. Where I work, we would not dream of implementing the whole software stack from scratch. We use lots of open-source libraries. My company's legal department is allergic to the full GPL because they want to keep open the option to do exactly what the GPL is designed to forbid -- make a proprietary product using open-source code. Usually our code is custom developed for a specific client but we might want to re-use that and/or make a general purpose product some day.

So, for us, using Apache/BSD licenses is easy. It's almost frictionless. Legal is comfortable with them, and pretty much all we have to do is include the license file and do a quick audit to make sure we've complied with it. GPL is much harder for us to work with because we have to justify to legal why we're signing away the rights before the product is even developed.

The whole point of the Open Source Initiative, as I understand it, is to promote adoption and use of free software. It turns out that copyleft is {sometimes, often} a barrier to that in the business world. So I would say that "open source" (aka non-copyleft) has simply beaten "copyleft" in the marketplace.

Copyleft was a brilliant idea but non-copyleft free libraries are what I use in day-to-day development work. And I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool, sandals-wearing, free-as-in-freedom, latte-sipping, corporation-hating hippie wannabe.

Actually, even RMS refers to the BSD and Apache licenses as "GPL-compatible free software". So the GPL and other two popular licenses, BSD and Apache, are all free software by the Free Software Definition. The difference is that GPL is a copyleft license and the Apache and BSD licenses aren't.

Why are the Apache and BSD licenses becoming more popular than the GPL? Because free software has grown up. Where I work, we would not dream of implementing the whole software stack from scratch. We use lots of open-source libraries. My company's legal department is allergic to the full GPL because they want to keep open the option to do exactly what the GPL is designed to forbid -- make a proprietary product using open-source code. Usually our code is custom developed for a specific client but we might want to re-use that and/or make a general purpose product some day.

So, for us, using Apache/BSD licenses is easy. It's almost frictionless. Legal is comfortable with them, and pretty much all we have to do is include the license file and do a quick audit to make sure we've complied with it. GPL is much harder for us to work with because we have to justify to legal why we're signing away the rights before the product is even developed.

The whole point of the Open Source Initiative, as I understand it, is to promote adoption and use of free software. It turns out that copyleft is {sometimes, often} a barrier to that in the business world. So I would say that "open source" (aka non-copyleft) has simply beaten "copyleft" in the marketplace.

Copyleft was a brilliant idea but non-copyleft free libraries are what I use in day-to-day development work. And I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool, sandals-wearing, free-as-in-freedom, latte-sipping, corporation-hating hippie wannabe.

Actually, even RMS refers to the BSD and Apache licenses as "GPL-compatible free software". So the GPL and other two popular licenses, BSD and Apache, are all free software by the Free Software Definition. The difference is that GPL is a copyleft license and the Apache and BSD licenses aren't.

Why are the Apache and BSD licenses becoming more popular than the GPL? Because free software has grown up. Where I work, we would not dream of implementing the whole software stack from scratch. We use lots of open-source libraries. My company's legal department is allergic to the full GPL because they want to keep open the option to do exactly what the GPL is designed to forbid -- make a proprietary product using open-source code. Usually our code is custom developed for a specific client but we might want to re-use that and/or make a general purpose product some day.

So, for us, using Apache/BSD licenses is easy. It's almost frictionless. Legal is comfortable with them, and pretty much all we have to do is include the license file and do a quick audit to make sure we've complied with it. GPL is much harder for us to work with because we have to justify to legal why we're signing away the rights before the product is even developed.

The whole point of the Open Source Initiative, as I understand it, is to promote adoption and use of free software. It turns out that copyleft is {sometimes, often} a barrier to that in the business world. So I would say that "open source" (aka non-copyleft) has simply beaten "copyleft" in the marketplace.

Copyleft was a brilliant idea but non-copyleft free libraries are what I use in day-to-day development work. And I say that as a dyed-in-the-wool, sandals-wearing, free-as-in-freedom, latte-sipping, corporation-hating hippie wannabe.

Yes, but that error wouldn't've been possible in a spreadsheet which forces the user to interact only w/ named data / ranges as Lotus Improv did.

It kills me that Quantrix Modeler 5 - Professional is $1,549.00 and not available for Mac OS X.

There is the opensource Flexisheet, but I don't see any readily available binaries:

http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gap/user-apps/FlexiSheet/?root=gap

There is. It's 70 years after the authors death or 95 years if the work was created as work for hire. Just like everything else.

And yes, it's bat shit crazy. Richard Stallman has posted a view of the subject in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html

I agree that it is crazy. But so is Stallman.

There is. It's 70 years after the authors death or 95 years if the work was created as work for hire. Just like everything else.

And yes, it's bat shit crazy. Richard Stallman has posted a view of the subject in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html

Obligatory link.

It turns out this hypothetical scenario actually was too extreme, it was set much too far in the future...

To make the changes MS would need to make, they would have to massive amounts of code to work with but not integrated with Linux and GNU in order to satisfy the GPL.

The difference between this and “incorporating” the GPL-covered software is partly a matter of substance and partly form. The substantive part is this: if the two programs are combined so that they become effectively two parts of one program, then you can't treat them as two separate programs. So the GPL has to cover the whole thing.

Can it be done? Probably. However it would be so far removed from Linux that it doesn't gain MS any benefit to use it all. Remember Linux is monolithic; moving drivers to userland would be painful. Currently Windows is based on a hybrid kernel. It would be far easier for MS to abandon proprietary than to make Linux work with Windows.

Wow, I just didn't expect anybody could be as lazy and ignorant as you. Since you are evidently incapable of doing a simple Google search, here's the story:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Straight from the Flat Earth Society. Thanks for again proving my point.

Wow, I just didn't expect anybody could be as lazy and ignorant as you. Since you are evidently incapable of doing a simple Google search, here's the story:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Consider GNU Objective C. NeXT initially wanted to make this front end proprietary; they proposed to release it as .o files, and let users link them with the rest of GCC, thinking this might be a way around the GPL's requirements. But our lawyer said that this would not evade the requirements, that it was not allowed. And so they made the Objective C front end free software.

The distinction between installed-software and software that's being run from your browser cache is becoming subtle.

RMS's views on the problem: The JavaScript Trap
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html

A solution: The LibreJS plugin for IceCat, Firefox etc. disables javascript if it is non-trivial and doesn't have a notice about using a free software licence:
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/

("trivial" is defined as "defines functions")

The distinction between installed-software and software that's being run from your browser cache is becoming subtle.

RMS's views on the problem: The JavaScript Trap
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.en.html

A solution: The LibreJS plugin for IceCat, Firefox etc. disables javascript if it is non-trivial and doesn't have a notice about using a free software licence:
https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/

("trivial" is defined as "defines functions")

Ouya is Android

Agreed.

not Linux.

Android is not GNU/Linux, but it does use the Linux kernel, and some people have reported success running a userspace based on GNU in a chroot alongside Android.

He specifically says

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html

Proprietary software developers have the advantage of money; free software developers need to make advantages for each other. Using the ordinary GPL for a library gives free software developers an advantage over proprietary developers: a library that they can use, while proprietary developers cannot use it. ...

  This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use anotherâ"no problem for them, only for us.

However, when a library provides a significant unique capability, like GNU Readline, that's a horse of a different color. The Readline library implements input editing and history for interactive programs, and that's a facility not generally available elsewhere. Releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline.

Just as free software is not a religion, proprietary developers do not have a freedom to use libraries created by free software developers. Where did you get that idea from?

Developers in general have a right to use software under the license it was released, and RMS is suggesting that free software developers use the license that best promotes the adoption of free software.

Indeed, this is one issue where he clearly shows pragmatism, by suggesting that commonly-available libraries be released under the lesser GPL. Yet you turn this around and claim that, by doing so, he is going 'to great lengths to compromise on freedom in order to push his free software religion'.

"You have to learn the difference between "Open Source philosophy" (RMS), "Open Source", open systems and access to source.

And perhaps you need to learn the difference between Free Software and Open Source.

Here's a good starting point: RMS supports only one of them.

GNU/Linux is the operating system. Do a favor to these kids and teach them to use the proper terminology. See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html

Also, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Good luck with your project!

GNU/Linux is the operating system. Do a favor to these kids and teach them to use the proper terminology. See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html

Also, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Good luck with your project!

Richard Stallman also has a bit to say about the topic of Lisp Machines, since one of the founders of Symbolics Lisp Machines, Russ Noftsker, was the person who hired Stallman at MIT's AI Lab. See his speech about his Lisp experiences and about writing Gnu EMACS.

That's not free software according to the FSF because it is BSD licensed rather than GPL.

That's not true. The BSD license is definitely present in the FSF's list of free software licenses.