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Stallman vs Ken Brown

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the throw-down-the-gloves dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Richard Stallman has become the latest person to speak-out about Ken Brown's "independent" study of Linux, which accuses it of being a Minix/Unix rip-off. Stallman says Brown deliberately confused the Linux kernel vs the GNU project, although I suspect Brown simply didn't know enough to be able to differentiate between the two."

2 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Same old broken Stallman record by Scott+Richter · · Score: 1, Troll
    Can stallman say *anything* without making it a discussion of GNU vs. Linux? Can he order a value meal at McDonalds? "I'd like a number 3, hold the pickles, and by the way Linux should really be called GNU/Linux?

    He makes himself irrelevant by making arguments that are, at best, tangentially related to the subject matter, and in the case of Ken Brown's book, Linux REALLY MEANS Linux - Linus never even claimed to have authored any of the GNU stuff that goes with a typical distro.

  2. Re:what MS funded "study" about Linux isn't FUD? by McDutchie · · Score: 1, Troll
    So why does he not call it "GNU/[KDE|GNOME]/[X]/Linux"?

    Answer: because that would be obnoxious.

    (1) GNOME is part of the GNU system (you know, GNU Network Object Model Environment.

    (2) No, the answer is that the GNU system is what started it all, years before Linux was even an idea in Linus Torvald's head. The GNU system was in use on top of other kernels years before Linux. Everything from 'ls' to 'gcc' in your GNU/Linux system is GNU.

    In other words, the fact is that the basis of the GNU/Linux system is GNU, not Linux -- as demonstrated by the fact that it's perfectly possible to run GNU on top of another kernel, and from an end user perspecetive you wouldn't know the difference.

    By continuing to push the whole "GNU/Linux" crap, but ignoring other components of a usable system, he's demonstrating hypocrisy.

    No, he's merely fighting against the falsification of history perpetrated by ethics-less opportunists such as Linus Torvalds and anti-RMS knee-jerkers such as a significant part of the Slashbot crowd.

    The present article demonstrates exactly why this kind of accuracy is essential - not just to give the FSF its due credit but simply for the sake of avoiding confusion and fighting FUD.

    Why do you not see it, when it's plain as day to the rest of us?

    Mirror, mirror on the wall...