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Feature:Free Linux
The Demon Penguin, first seen on a T-shirt at the Linux World conference, is the mascot of the movement to create a an FSF-free Linux by replacing all FSF-owned software in Linux distributions with replacement programs from the BSD distributions.
The Linux kernel, while GPL'd, is certainly not to be replaced, nor is anything else that was *not* written directly by the FSF, whether it's GPL'd or not. As for the compiler, perhaps egcs is a better technical solution. A mere GPL does not GNUware make. Only software that the FSF claims is theirs should be replaced.
The point is *not* that we do not like the FSF's software, or that we do not like the GPL -- well, at least not all of us. Rather, it's because we cannot abide anyone usurping responsibility for the intellectual works of others. In the case of the FSF, such an inconsistent act is oxymoronic at best, and hypocritical at worst.
Let's use real data, not the hyperbolic rhetoric so common to the FSF. Here's a code analysis of a SuSE installation. Note that FSF ownership does not even quite reach 10%, yet rms and his followers would have it called "GNU/Linux". Their claim has no honest justification. Witness the numbers, and judge for yourself: http://www.vipul.net/codd/suse5.2.R.html
Code Contribution Distribution for S.u.S.E. 5.2 Package Name: suse5.2.coddPackage Size: +514659722 bytes.
- uncredited: 82733250 (16.075%)
- free software foundation, inc: 51254116 (9.958%)
- sun microsystems, inc: 38243234 (7.43%)
- the regents of the university of california: 23581801 (4.582%)
- x consortium: 18163125 (3.529%)
- thomas g. lane: 8464917 (1.644%)
- the university of washington: 7832780 (1.521%)
- digital equipment corporation: 7206660 (1.4%)
- snns group, ipvr, univ: 4366722 (0.848%)
- aladdin enterprises: 4108079 (0.798%)
- silicon graphics, inc: 3680070 (0.715%)
- robert nation: 2465545 (0.479%)
- maorong zou: 2438025 (0.473%)
Even if it is 10%, that's not enough to rename Linux to the repugnant "GNU/Linux". And it's not 10%. On a fully loaded server system, it's much less. Attached you will find an `ls` of /usr/man/man1 and /usr/man/man8 from a well-loaded RedHat Linux server system. Let the FSF indicate which commands were written by the FSF themselves, so that their claim of GNU/Linux might have some legitimacy. Until the FSF can prove actual authorship for > 50% of these, they have no business with this deceptive "GNU/Linux" moniker.
Let us give credit where it is due: to all those hundreds and hundreds of selfless volunteers all over the world who have made all Linux what it is today. The bogus term "GNU/Linux" confuses the public about what free operating systems like Linux and BSD are all about, and, perhaps more dangerous to us in the long run, dishonors the innumerable contributors by ignoring their massive efforts.
So please, everyone: let Linux remain Linux, nothing more -- but nothing less! When rms and his minions abandon this misguided and deceptive battle, we too can relent, but until then, support the Demon Penguin!
"GNU/Linux" ?
"scummy"
"repugnant"
Methinks the adjectives chosen say more about their authors than they say about the moniker "GNU/Linux" itself.
What
A
Nice
Kernel
That'll make a nice acronym....
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
If you want a useful system with no GNU software, you _have_ to replace all these.
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Also, the FSF has willingly adopted non-FSF packages for the GNU system. This includes BSD and X code.
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If the legal system didn't allow people to copyright ideas, this would not be an issue.
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Read before you post. Unless you're such a deep thinker that you have a priori knowledge of what other people have posted.
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-Brett.
While I'm personally against the GNU/Linux name for purely phonetic reasons, I think there are some issues to be resolved before I'd explicitly support the Demon Linux movement.
1) FSF is the largest single contributer of code to Linux. Why must they represent over half the code before they get credit? If they did have over 50%, I'd think it would be more 'fair' to drop Linux and just call it GNU.
2) The number of lines of code does not reflect the actual value of the code. Specifically, things like gcc are worth far more than its LOC value since it begets almost all the other code. Besides, I thought a good programmer was one that did much with few lines of code. This chart _could_ mean that the FSF represents 70% of the core functionality with only 10% of the code.
3) The whole purpose of the FSF is to help the community and is thus a very altruistic organization. Now oddly enough, this group of people has a human as their leader and even more strange is that this human appears to be less than perfect. I can understand not being completly enamoured with the FSF's leader but does that really force us to actively attack the organization he happens to run? Why are we trying to snub a group of people who are trying to help?
4) There are no compeling technical reasons for replacing all the work that the FSF has contributed to Linux. Their code is, above all, free code. Also of importance, I find a great deal of their code to be valuable. Now, if I have complete control of my own code (they gave it to me) and no one can take that right from me, it makes no sense for me to rewrite it from scratch. Instead, when I've got a problem, It would be much more effective for me to work with the existing code. Of couse this obvious as it is the foundation of Open Source software. But what this does mean is that Demon Linux is a purely political movement not based on reason but emotions.
Look, this is really not that complex.
Linux is GPLed because Linus wanted to contribute back to the community. Get it? Both RMS and Linus are part of the SAME community so they solved a problem together that they could not have solved apart. This IS the goal RMS was striving for. We, the people, help each other out. The whole beauty of this is that RMS didn't have to personally organize and code a Unix kernel by himself.
Just because Linus' kernel was picked over the Hurd doesn't mean that we somehow cleverly defeated RMS and kept him from world dominiation. We helped him gain the world! And, in the process, we helped ourselves.
I'm glad someone prominent decided to speak up on this. I've always felt that the term
GNU/Linux was pretty scummy, and its quite obvious
from all the argument over it that it's certainly
not very catchy. Credit where credit is due is
one thing, but credits in the product's name is
another.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
Go do a DejaNews search on Tom and his rants about Richard Stallman and the "GPV". For example, his "GPL Documentation == unspeakable evil" thread (he says it is a "creeping poison").
Based on his postings, I would say he is a person with a lot of hatred towards Richard Stallman, the FSF, the GPL, anything "GNU". I highly suggest that you read up on his history before supporting anything that Tom Christiansen does. You want want to help him anyway, but you should at least understand where he is coming from first.
Is that you, Tom? John?
There's a lot more than "questioning" going on with Tom. Review his posts, note his liberal use of vitriol and pejoritaves, then get back with me. There is certainly nothing wrong with questioning Stallman, but he takes it a few levels beyond that.
What's not true? I didn't say anything about the Perl documentation.
Umm, what are you going to do for a compiler, if you want a completely FSF-free distro? egcs certainly won't do, since it's merely some enhancements to gcc. The core of the compiler is still FSF code, so if you use it, you still have tons of FSF code in a crucial part of your system.
Write your own compiler? That seems a bit much to do merely to spite the FSF.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Agreed. Linus is down at around 0.02%, so obviously it would be ludicrous to name the entire OS after something that is less than 0.1% of the total code (even counting everybody other than Linus that's contributed to the Linux kernel).
Since the FSF is the single largest author of the OS, it makes sense to call it the GNU OS. In fact, it is the same GNU OS that the FSF has been working on for quite a few years now, except that the still-not-finished HURD kernel was replaced by the Linux kernel. As such, it's the GNU OS with the Linux kernel, or GNU/Linux for short. If anything should be dropped, it should be the "Linux" portion, since that's just a temporary replacement until HURD is done, not GNU, which is the OS that is here to stay.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Tom's big objection was that if you GPL documentation, then you GPL code examples in that documentation. If those examples are GPL'd, then you can't use them if you want to release you work under, say, the BSD license.
That means, the GPL license PREVENTS you from doing as you wish with your code. That means, the GNU GPL does not promote freedom, because it restricts people's actions - namely in the act of releasing code under a different license.
Actually, that's incorrect. You can release your own code under the BSD license, even if you have previously released it under the GPL. You are free to do whatever you want with your code, including releasing it in separate instances under different licenses, even mutually incompatible ones. The GPL does not prevent you from re-releasing your code, documentation, or anything else, at a later time under whatever license you wish (even a non-Free Software one).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem is that he tries to prove that it shouldn't be called GNU/Linux by showing percentages of code contributions. However, his percentages show that the FSF contributed more code than all the Linux kernel people combined. That sorta counteracts his point. If we are to choose a name by percent of code contributed, then it should be the GNU OS, since the FSF is the single largest contributor.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ok, go ahead, make an FSF-free distribution. It'll take you years, but it's possible. Write your own compiler from scratch (egcs will not do, since it's heavily based on gcc), use a bunch of BSD utilities, and by 2005 or so it might be stable. Let us know when it's done.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think it depends on what you call "Linux". If you mean the entire contents of a distribution, it's obvious that GNU software is a minority. But if you mean the "core Unix" (think Unix V7, guy), the GNU software is almost everything except the kernel. :-).
The question of where the OS ends and the applications begin is a tricky one. Just ask Microsoft and the Department of Justice, which are currently squabbling over exactly that question
-- Eric
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
depending upon the type of licenses chosen by the contributors. It would also be a big expenditure of time rewriting all those tools! :)
This "Free Linux" idea, purveyed by this Tom Slick guy, sounds like a commercial ploy to me. It may be one of those attacks on the freeness of Linux and any other GNUly appointed system. After all, Linux is already free!
The FSF or Free Software Foundation is basically THE FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION of Linux; take away the foundation and the building discorporates.
Stallman is interested in Linux remaining free (see FSF definition of free). The GPL is the protection afforded to free software against being coopted by non-free (proprietary) entities. Stallman is sometimes referred to as the prophet. Ok, so maybe he acts like one sometimes. He has a vision and wants to make sure it doesn't get lost in growing commercialization of Linux. You may not like what the so called prophet has to say but it's got to be said.
GNU/Linux as a name? I could care less. It doesn't matter much to me as long as it remains free - truly free.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
...is what he was counting as OS code; Not stuff purchased separately.
It _is_ rather a good question -- how much of the bundled tools are actually part of the OS? After all, Unix relies heavily on non-kernel stuff to make it what it is...
Hell, if it ain't kernel, it's userspace -- and of all the bundled userspace stuff, most of it's not from GNU.
Little thought experiment:
If I removed ls, cp, mv, rm, ln, bash and the like and put a new GUI with no shell on top, would it still be linux, or would it be My/Linux?
I'd still think of it as linux, just with some very different stuff on top.
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
They're not calling it GNU/Linux because it was produced by the FSF. They are calling it that because much of the software is released under the GNU Public License.
In any case, it makes no sense to ask "who created this tool" because the point is that EVERYONE can contribute to existing code.
It would be a lot less misleading to partition by license rather than original programmer. If you do that I believe you will find much justification for calling it GNU/Linux.
Posted by Nick Carraway:
The FSF is the single largest contributing organization in that S.u.S.E. distribution, according to his numbers. And let's not forget which compiler and binutils generated the code that makes up the remaining 90%. EGCS? I don't think so.
Have fun rewriting GCC, binutils, emacs and all the rest, boys. It's sure a lot easier than thinking of something original, isn't it? Oh, and lest you think I'm some huge RMS fan, I'm not. He's goofy and he makes us all look like dorks by association. Still, I won't begrudge the man his props...
Posted by mrcl:
Whenever I use gcc or gdb, or gmake or countless other important apps in linux, I know that the FSF is behind them. Its right there in the name. I appreciate what they have done, and I wouldn't want to have to rewrite their code.
I think that they are getting plenty of credit, and they don't need any more.
Whenever you use linux, you are using the kernel, which Linus wrote, and so it should remain named linux.
The name stays as "linux", and we leave in the FSF code.
mrcl
Posted by Art Pepper:
>This rant is just stupid.
Agreed. B-O-R-I-N-G.
RMS is controversial. You agree with his point of view or not. All of these "discussions" about GNU/Linux vs Linux are the same thing over and over again. I will never be resolved.
It is one thing for informed people to disagree. But I read replies from people who obviously don't know anything of the history of free software/open source.
That's all. Back to work!
Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:
Duh
Posted by Alf Alpha:
How about:
Gnulix -- gah-new-licks
or
Gnulinux -- gah-NEW-lin-ucks
I think either one would be pretty rockin'
Or you could go the other way with
Lingnu -- Lin-gah-new
or
Linignu -- Lin-eh-gah-new
or even
Linugnux -- Lin-ah-gah-nucks
Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:
>> And it's not 10%
Gosh, you're right.
It's 9.958% on that link you gave us.
Good point, Tom. That's not 10%.
You nailed that one, boy.
I can't imagine how FSF can have any comeback to that one.
-----------------------------
Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:
.
Me fragment the community? Am I the one posting nonsense like:
9.958% is not 10%
No. Look in the mirror, pal . .
Oh, wait, you're an AC. Guess you don't have a face, eh?
In any event, Tom's little missive actually convinced me to give RMS' arguments another look. Tom was so absurd, so prone to hair splitting that I actually think RMS has a point now.
Oh, one last gob of spit in your face. If you don't want to use an OS because of its name (witness ol' Tommy, ever the fount of reason: "rename Linux to the repugnant 'GNU/Linux'"), then, well, you got real problems.
-----------------------------
Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
RMS himself has claimed in a recent interview that about 30% of the code in a basic Linux distribution is from the FSF (although he may have meant that it's under the GPL; one problem in this discussion is that the distinction is not always clear). 30% may be a plurality, sure, but it would have nothing to run on if it weren't for the kernel -- and the kernel couldn't be built without gcc.
So? Linux is obviously a complex product and the distro people deserve whatever money and egoboo they make. FSF software is a central part of any distro. That doesn't mean we're all morally obligated to do whatever RMS says -- or indeed to pay any attention to him at all -- but on the other hand RMS has earned the right to try to make his case for the moral necessity of the GPL -- which he is doing, and taking advantage of the sudden industry interest in Linux to evangelize as much as possible.
Our movement -- and I don't care what you call it, we all know what it is -- includes revivalist RMS, PR specialist ESR, politician BP, executives at Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, and VA, and thousands of hackers and hundreds of thousands of testers, advocates, and kibitzers. That's just the way it is; millions of people doing their own thing on Planet Linux for their own reasons, and none of us has the authority to exile anybody else from the movement.
I personally think this effort -- to replace FSF software purely out of spite, or out of disgust with the press attention paid to RMS, or out of fear that clueless business executives may shy away from Linux because of RMS' mystical advocacy of his particular brand of freedom (or the misunderstanding of the GPL apparent in the rantings of some of its more immature supporters, whose mouths are substantially bigger than their brains) -- this effort is fundamentally misguided.
We're not about "reading anybody out" of the movement. (Some people, like Bruce Perens, periodically read themselves out, then back in again. That's their privilege.) We're about producing high-quality software with a completely open and cooperative development model. If we don't do that, we might as well spend our time and resources collecting baseball cards or playing golf.
So instead of reinventing the FSF's wheel, let's go on to making GNOME reliable, getting KDE 2 out the door, expanding The Gimp's capabilities, bulletproofing our NFS routines, writing USB drivers, perfecting LessTif and WINE, or other things that need doing. Wasting development time just because we're ticked off at what someone says is silly, bordering on the childish. We're supposed to be grownups.
Craig
One point that I don't understand about the whole license debate -- GPL vs the freer BSD/X/Artistic etc. -- is that GPL people keep repeating this sort of thing as though they have lost something they were entitled to if somebody takes the available source, makes some secret improvements, and makes money selling it -- which is prohibited by the GPL but allowed (one way or another) by most of the others.
If you have some freely-available source, and so does somebody else, and that somebody else makes changes to it without giving them to you, what precisely have you lost? Can you no longer make the same use of the source you always could? What exactly have they deprived you of? How have they "torn apart" the program?
And if this could happen so easily and inevitably, why is all the FreeBSD stuff still doing so well?
Craig
I like it, it has the string "gnu" embedded in it.
Of course the One True Name is... GNULIX!
;-)
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
www.satanic.org
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
It makes me sad to see all of this animosity over a mere label. I accept "Linux" and "GNU/Linux" to be equivalent terms, and don't feel offended by either. Call it "Lavendar FistCheese(tm)" for all I care. Let's have a holy-war against holy-wars for a change.
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No, no, it is a sign that like him we must think not of the things of the body, but of the face and head!
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The fulfillment of RMS's dream is not a FSF-copyrighted kernel (Hurd) but a copylefted-kernel (Linux). That FSF does not hold the copyright is irrelevant. That linux is GPL'd is.
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I wrote: That linux is GPL'd is [what matters].
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Thank you Caleb, for putting it in terms that anyone should be able to understand. Anyone who, after reading your post, persists in their nomenclature-jihad (from either side!) simply isn't up to the task of understanding.
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That's a good point (about gift-giving), and it should hold equally well for Linus -- who should have no qualms with me, from this point forward, refering to GNU/Linux as "Tux". Although I still like "Lavendar FistCheese(tm)".
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Hi, Brett. I think you're being disingenuous here. The GPL does not prevent money-grubbing programmers from making money from their own labor. Nay, it doesn't even prevent them from making money from GPL'd software! I say, as respectfully as I can muster, that you're talking straight out of your ass.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
In response to infidel LetterJ, I'd like to initiate a project to recreate those parts of the English language that came from Latin, French, Norse or Spanish. Then we'll be free at last!
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I agree there with you there, but what you're saying is only trivially true insofar as there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all license. All you are saying is that there are some problem-domains where the GPL would be a poor choice of licenses. That's a far cry from Brett's claim.
A license is just a tool. You're saying that a hammer isn't very useful when you need to drive a screw. Brett may grok this, but he's obviously holding a grudge against the hammer anyway.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
You want to replace all the GNU tools because you think RMS has too much of an ego? This is not just a waste of time but destructive.
One of the GOOD things about Linux is that, even though there are lots of distributions, there is a lot of commonality in the toolsets people use. If common utilities start behaving differently on different distributions then the FUD mongers will suddenly be right about splintering and infighting.
Grow up.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
>Nobody complains when Caldera, Redhat, Slackware, Debian, Suse, or any of the other dists put their name or spin on linux. "Open linux", "Turbo linux", "Debian Linux" '
Those names clarify a variant, they don't (intend to) claim credit for the whole thing.
>If people want to call it GNU/Linux then let them.
That is not the issue. It's people getting on my case if *I* don't.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
According to the review from ArsTechnica:
"The retail version of SuSE 6.0 comes with enough software on the included five-CD set that even those of you with cable modems will feel lucky."
Since the kernel and GNU utilities are the same size no matter how much extra crap is thrown in, won't their percentage go down as bloat goes up? 300 Meg is ~9% of five CD's, while 45% of one CD (like Redhat). And I'm sure a lot of that "uncredited author" code that's #1 is the crap that SUSE throws in on the 4th or 5th CD's.
While I agree that GNU/Linux is a crappy name, I have real problems with this methodology of proving it.
Agreed, agreed, and agreed again. If RMS' numbers lie, Tom's are no more honest. I mean, seriously -- GCC. Compiler technology is some of the most difficult stuff in computer science, and the free software movement is built (literally) wiht GCC. Good luck, Tom, and shut up until you have TCC for us, and Temacs as well.
Please do tell us -- what is your gripe with RMS? So he wants credit for his vision and his excellent work. I'm more than happy to give it to him.
Here's the real question -- could Linux have reached critical mass without the GNU utilities?
That is still the wrong question. Could Linux have reached critical mass without Intel CPUs? Since Linus wrote the first version on an Intel chip should we call it Intel/Linux?
How about ING/Linux (ING = ING's not GNU)?
The real question is -- why change the name when it already had a name?
in 1948th place with 0.002% of the code. That is a very interesting chart.
The answer to this is simple. I'll come up with my LYING distribution
(Linux, Yes, Isn't Named GNU)
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
Here's some favorite companies and there breakdown
~ ~^~
#2 Sun Microsystems 7.43% (and a little tiny bit mislabeled as Sun Microsystem)
#587 Apple Computer 0.017% (curious)
#2270 Microsoft Corporation 0.001% (Thanks Uncle Bill)
#3483 IBM 0.001% (what about the Apache/NT patch?)
nothing from AOL, but there is a rather large personal contribution from an AOL address.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^
Yep sure enough I misposted above. He actually shows up about four times. I suppose my number involves some of his earlier code left around.
^ ~
And I think you are right, they don't fear Linux as much as they fear the GPL's hungry nature. Linus's origional copyright wasn't GPL but he changed it to GPL becuase "it worked better" whatever that means.
I like the GPL, it is enough of a marker. I'd hate to have to name every application I release under the GPL as GNU/Nosepicker, etc...
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~
Do a search of the above subject on slashdot and you'll see this is one of the most contested ideas dating back to Bits and Chips.
~ ~^~
But I'll agree with it. The GPL would not be able to protect my code if it allowed others freedom to use of it or allowed me freedom to use anothers GPLed code. But it does protect it, in some very strange public limbo where alls fair as long as it stays in that state (of GPL). The GPL may not be freedom but it is fair! And that is more than any other Liscence out there.
The GPL is in itself an owner of the code, not the writer or the person who adds to it. But at least it is free as in it won't ever *have* to cost you money. And it is free speach. But it is not freedom.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^
Yep, I counted four entries if you include a cooperative contribution, after I posted it. The entry I found (I don't know why it was the only one I found) seems to be some of his oldest legacy code. Way to go Linus! It would be interesting historicaly if people had said what version of the program they were contributing to.
^ ~~^~
I searched for a few names I knew and didn't pull up anything.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~
The FSF has still contributed the largest single share. And I suspect that if one looks at the core -- /bin, /usr/bin, libc, and such -- the fraction is much higher.
More to the point, though, the FSF provided the real impetus behind the free (speech, as opposed to beer) software movement, and devised the framework (GPL) in which free software could be created and be guaranteed to remain free. Whether someone else would have had the same insight is anyone's guess, but it's certainly not obvious that that would have happened. This, to me, is more important than any piece of software, other than gcc, libc, and to a lesser extent emacs.
Finally, the Demon Penguin gang really shouldn't talk about using egcs if their intent is to produce an FSF-free Linux distribution. egcs is quite directly based on gcc, even if it has diverged. The egcs team quite openly acknowledges that fact through the name (Experimental GNU Compiler Suite).
GNU/Linux may be an awkward name, and names may not always be fair, and Richard Stallman may be very annoying, but that does not make his point invalid. Eric Raymond, who is no particular friend of the FSF's position (he's generally regarded as a, if not the, leader in what I refer to as the "pragmatic" camp of the free source movement), took pains to acknowledge that fact at Linux World.
you idiot. completely independant of fsf
Why doesn't Stallman release his own distro (with only FSF software) and call it Official GNU/Linux (tm)?
Let the marketplace decide the preferred distro/name.
RMS claimed that nearly half the code on a Linux distribution was GNU code. Ergo, using his own stats is the way to defeat him.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
He made the comments about a single install from a single distribution with a specific set of options. Probably had the box setup as a programming box.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Things that I like ...
:-)
That Richard Stallman doesn't like:
KDE
O'Reilly Books
Tom Christiansen
That Tom Christiansen doesn't like:
GNU/Linux
GPLed Documentation
Richard Stallman
But I can like all of these things, and so can you
Mike Greaves
-- Mike Greaves
That you, pots?
--
W.A.S.T.E.
W.A.S.T.E.
Where can I get one of those t-shirts?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
You beat me to it. For example, gcc is a VERY big part of Linux (or, GNU/Linux, if you must). Without gcc, where would we be? I doubt Linux would've gotten as far as it has without gcc. RMS also wrote the initial Emacs and also wrote gdb. I view those as VERY significant contributions, and that doesn't include the other software that the FSF has donated.
Seriously, Tom---what's your gripe with the FSF? RMS wants his ego stroked, he wants people to appreciate his contributions. If no one ever told Linus "thanks" and "good job", he may have stopped working on the kernel long ago.
ESR points out in the good ol' C&B paper that ego is a big part of free software development. RMS wants a piece of that, he wants appreciation.
I, for one, greatly appreciate RMS's contributions, and I recognize them. I still don't call it GNU/Linux, my habits are otherwise, but when I explain Linux to someone, I explain how the FSF contributed greatly with all of the classic UNIX utilities (sed, awk, grep, etc.) as well as a pretty darn good C/C++ compiler, debugger, and GNU make.
I think it'll take Tom quite a while to write all of that himself. We can have Tom/Linux with Tom CC, tdb (Tom's debugger), and Tom Make. Have fun, Tom, come back in ten years when you've finished those and we'll see what else you can waste your time on.
No, we want to call it Linux. You know the name of the kernel. You never see "Sun Microsystems/Solaris", or "AT&T/Unix", or "IBM/OS/2" There is no reason to recognize a software contributor in the name of the OS, if you're going to do that you might as well call it "GNU/Linus Torvalds/Sun Microsystems/University of California/Washington University/Donald Becker/Alan Cox/AT&T/Aladdin Enterprises/X Consortiom/XFree/Red Hat Labs/Cygnus/I'm sorry about people I forgot/Linux." That's rediculous. I have no problem with "RedHat Linux" or "SuSE Linux" because when you get down to it they decided what goes in the OS, they created the OS, they can call it whatever the heck they want. Debian can call it "GNU/Linux" if they want, but FSF should expect me to.
The only way Tom is ever really going to happy
is when we have, eg,
awk.pl
ls.pl
all the way up to
emacs.pl
gcc.pl
gdb.pl
xf86_svga.pl
and, of course,
linux.pl
But seriously, haven't we got enough *real*
problems to solve?
Sure, the FSF doesn't have so much of the code.
:-)
I think the FSF would reply that they started the whole idea, and kept it going during the long dark times of the 80's.
It's probably fair to say that if the FSF had never written a line of code, Linux would not exist, whereas if one of the other contributers (except Linus, obviously) had not written their code, someone else would have filled their place.
Of course that's not to say that those 'other' coders have contributed less to the body of code. It's simply a comment on how the Open Source tradition has been built, and who laid the foundations.
That said, I don't think the GNU/Linux thing makes any sense at all. The FSF should be credited, but not like that.
Also, while this GNU/Linux thing is indeed a very public and a very petty squabble, I think RMS and the FSF are going to be an increasingly important counterweight to what is happening with ESR et al. at the other end of the scale.
I see RMS as a constant against which measurements can be made
-----
Hmm.. From what I remember of Free PC software, it was almost all free beer and no free speech (i.e. all binaries, no code).
The point is that the FSF built foundations. Writing a C compiler is hard. Lots of people who later wrote free code in C would not have done so if GCC hadn't been available. Also, if the FSF hadn't written GCC, I don't think anyone else would have done. It's a massive task that requires deep committment and competence. If zlib didn't exist someone would get fed up and write it. If gcc didn't exist, people would have bought more proprietary compilers.
-----
Please don't call people idiots, and please use whole sentences. It makes you look smarter.
Anyway, last I checked *BSD systems use gcc. So, BSD did not create a C compiler. Also, the roots of BSD are in an academic organisation that paid people nice yearly salaries to work on code full time.
The fact remains that the kind of people who churn out jolly jelpful things like majordomo and xv and so forth are simply not in the same business as the people who created gcc.
And, many (most?) of those that created jolly helpful things like xv would not have been able to do so without gcc or another excellent 100% free c compiler.
Imagine if Perl was commercial. What would be the point in anyone creating Majordomo if you had to go out and buy Perl to run it? Instead, whoever wrote Majordomo would more likely have spent the money on a commercial listserver.
It is the fact that the _foundation_ software is free that has promoted the massive amount of software apps and utils built on those foundations. And it is the early, idealist groups like the FSF that built much of the foundations.
-----
No, you are all missing the point of the thread.
Tom wanted a BSD/Artistic style license. FSF wants a GNU style license.
Tom objects to the viral nature of the GPL.
Tom's big objection was that if you GPL documentation, then you GPL code examples in that documentation. If those examples are GPL'd, then you can't use them if you want to release you work under, say, the BSD license.
That means, the GPL license PREVENTS you from doing as you wish with your code. That means, the GNU GPL does not promote freedom, because it restricts people's actions - namely in the act of releasing code under a different license.
It's not the only view point, but Tom is certainly not outrageous in his concerns.
It all becomes more interesting if you think of the GPL as applying to IDEAS within the documentation. Suppose the canonical Perl documentation is GPL's and it explains what a closure is in Perl. Does that mean you can't use closures unless you GPL the code with closures in?
This then becomes a debate on whether the GPL covers the _text_ (ASCII) of the documentation, or the sense of the documentation. At this point it becomes obvious to me that the GPL is not defined in such a way that it applies usefully to documentation.
With source code, the ASCII of the code is inextricably linked to the function the code performs. This is simply not true of documentation.
It's an important an interesting problem, that no one except Tom seemed to care about or understand, much.
-----
Yes, but the license covering documentation is:
1. Still viral in nature (requires that derived documentation retains the same license)
2. Appears to have been designed on for documentation explaining the function and use of programs, which is not at all the same as documentation explaining, say, the finer points of socket programming in Perl.
So, the issue remains that:
1. The FSF has an unhealthy (in Tom's opion) fondness for viral licenses.
2. Neither the FSF nor anyone else is really thinking hard about copyright concerns for documentation that includes significant bodies of source code.
You say:
"Perhaps that is also why copyright covers expressions of ideas rather than ideas themselves."
However, I think you will find that the distinction between an idea and its expression is so subtle, complex and disputed as to make your sentence (and, I dare say are large amount of copyright law) rather unhelpful.
And yes, clues are good things, but a miserable replacement for intelligence, and dare I say it, politeness?
-----
Hmmm.
Those are good points, but I'm not sure the analogy is quite good...
"One who believes in free speech _ought not_ to speak in a way that hinders the free speech of others." That's OK, but what is NOT OK is:
"One who believes in free speech _ought not to be able to_ speak in a way that hinders the free speech of others."
Now, I think the GPL believes in the second statement. The first statement says that it is wrong (in a moral sense) to limit free speech of others. The GPL would go further an enforce that morality by making it impossible.
I think Tom objects to that imposition.
Intersting stuff tho...
-----
Won't the creation of an FSF-free Linux (BSD/Linux or Whatever/Linux) automatically create the need to call the current Linux GNU/Linux due to the need to differentiate the two? So they end up actually creating what they were trying to destroy? Oh, boy, fragmentation - what a contribution.
Tom
Why not call the OS by the name of the distribution? That means Debian is 'Debian GNU/Linux' and Redhat is 'Redhat Linux' and something else might be 'Joe-Bob Monkey/Linux'.
If you want to use an OS called 'GNU/Linux', use Debian.
(If you want an OS with real package management, use Debian, too.)
--
Linux deserves to be named not because Linus wrote/edited a good chunk of the code, but because ever single line of code in the kernel was contributed willingly to a project named "Linux".
It's a matter of kernel code lines vs. fsf code lines -- not Linus's code vs. fsf code.
One important tip I learned from a few years
of perl5-porters was that if you didn't
strictly have to read a Tom Christiansen
post, it was often easier to ignore it and
save yourself the karmic hassle of feeling
dirty at the end of a mailreading session.
Tom's a moderately smart guy, but he's so full
of bile now, for whatever reason, that it's
no longer worth the effort.
They only require you to be on topic, RTFM and ask questions in English. If you expect them to spend time on your problems you better spend enough time to satisfy the above.
/mill
Spot on. Nicely put.
:)
If *I'd* made those comments, I'd want to take credit for them
--
Then why does it matter whether you replace the GNU utilities? Personally, I have no problem with people running a BSD/Linux system. But this article seems as hypocritical to me as the position it claims to find "reprehensive". Counting total lines of code (as he did) seems to me to be rather silly. Unless you want to count Apache, Netscape, and LyX (not to mention innumerable mail clients, news readers, IRC clients, games...) as part of the operating system. Microsoft deja vu...
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
The argument isn't that the FSF has contributed to Linux. The argument is that Linux _is_ GNU. Once the HURD is finished we'll have a GNU/Hurd system. And I heard of some discussion of a GNU/BSD or even a GNU/Solaris system (which is IMO stretching it a bit but you get the idea)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Actually, no; I believe that FreeBSD uses its own replacement for most of the standard GNU utilities (not sure about libc tho). I saw a thread in the Debian mail archives about creating a GNU/FreeBSD distribution, though. Don't know what happened to it.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Where? Could you please give me a reference to a quote by RMS that says "I created the notion of free software"?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Perhaps most of the stuff in a Linux distro isn't from the GNU project but most of the core system is. Comparing GNU/Linux to Apache/Linux or X/Linux is silly; my system runs fine if I do a dpkg --purge apache. Rather than lines of code, I'd like to see what's commonly installed on systems and what's installed by default.
IMO, saying that Linux system's are NOT GNU at the core is almost attempted theft.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I agree. After reading the postings by the Horde here, I think I'm going to start calling it GNU/Linux.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Linux is GNU.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
"If you pick up a starving dog and give him food, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
-- Mark Twain
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
How about purging (however your system does it) libc, ls, sh, and sed?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
They started GNU. People like to forget about GNU, even when they're using it. I find that to be somewhere between amusing and depressing.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Yes, then it wouldn't be GNU/Linux anymore. Your point?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I think you need to get a grip on what GNU is. It is a project to build a UNIX system based on FREE software. Not on GPLed software. (They seem to be concerned that the core system is primarily GPL) Therefore, if they find a sufficiently good piece of free software, they include it. They would be fools to rewrite X when XFree is out there.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I always did say RMS was full of shit. This kinda' proves it. ;-)
Hey Richard, comb your hair, take a shower, and get a life.
- Randy
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
(He also discusses the problem of competing against free software.)
What you fail to realize here is that if free software destroys proprietary software, it is because it is better. Period. You can't make it stop by complaining about losing your work; the lamp-oil manufacturers lost their jobs when gas became commonly used, and gas when elecrical lights became common.
You can NOT put the genie back in the bottle.
Deal with it.
How does one deal with it? A common answer is to go with the free software flow, but use a license that's less restrictive than the GPL. The LGPL works decently well; Perl's Artistic licence is good. The Open Source movement has prospered because of people who, I think, see this coming.
The GPL is bad, I believe, but not for any of the reasons you list. Rather, it's bad because it's hostile to perfectly good licenses.
-Billy
I would be supremely annoyed if some of the GPLd programs I wrote were called GNU software.
For some I wouldn't care, but for most, it's not more GNU software than it is extraterrestrial software (ie: not much).
Brett Glass, it is ridiculous for you to comment on the foundation of the Free Software movement. It is like a fox telling a farm owner how to keep his chicken farm secure. You have done your best to discredit the concept of Open Source, and what you want is a source of free code to profit from. And now you are pretending to be a friend of Bruce Perens and tell him about RMS?
Come on. Behave with more honesty.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Enough said.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
RMS deserves his place in history. He gave us a great big whopping pile of nifty utilities that hackers world-wide use everyday. Every Linuxer who can read (which probably covers us all) knows who RMS is, and what he stands for.
Even more importantly, however, RMS gave us the GPL, which allows us to write software and give it away without fear of having our contributions hijacked. The GPL is one seriously cool hack, and for this contribution, perhaps more than anything, RMS should be thanked.
But the only thing worse for marketing than GNU/Linux would be if Linus's original name "Freax" would have stuck. RMS may not care about this, but some of us want to use Linux and still have a life.
The second Linux is ubiquitous I will be the first to praise Saint Ignucious as the saviour of all computerkind. I will even promise to use words like gnu-riffic and gnu-licious. In the meantime it's all about marketing, and GNU/Linux doesn't stand a chance.
OK if we follow tchrists philosophy we shouldn't call our favorite OS Linux either, as the Linux kernel itself constitutes a far smaller percentage of the code on a "Linux" system than the that attributed to the FSF/Gnu people.
If we're going to try and give credit to all the uncredited contributions then I personally vote to rename the system to JRH OS.
for J. Random Hacker OS.
- The Rokhed
Gnu tools are used everywhere.
Does anyone refer to GNU/Solaris? GNU/AIX? GNU/DU? Hell, I even have a copy of the Cygnus tools for win32 on this here NT box. Do I call it GNU/NT? No, no, no, and no. The os is typically named by the creator with whatever name they so choose. As it turns out even our beloved LT did not get his wish and the kernel was named by a sysadmin.
After that, the users choose. Have you _ever_ seen M$ refer to itself as M$? No, of course not.
I call it Linux. You can call it whatever you want.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
It's a perfectly good English interpretation to read your intro as ``[Christiansen] argues, with the FSF and RMS, that...'' (note the added commas), which means he agrees with them. In fact, that's what I expected to read, and was taken aback when the article said the exact opposite. :-)
English is wonderful, not least due to its openness to the well-place ambiguity, but when you're writing blurbs, make sure there are none you didn't intend.
</nitpick>
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
I see a total sum of 0% that is attributed to either Linus Torvalds or Linux. So why call it Linux when that is such a misrepresented name?
Why not come up with a name that envelops all the percentages on Tom's list. Or why not just call it "Redhat" or "Suse" as opposed to "Redhat Linux". This naming scheme would rely on the the vendor and less on the actual contents, which I think would be a good strategy in differentiating the distributions.
If the Free Software Foundation wants credit, let them package their own distribution and call it "GNU Linux", or just "GNU". It seems this is their ultimate goal anyways. GNU is not Unix. And GNU is not Linux either.
Joseph Elwell.
It's butty-ugly. Isn't that enough reason?
-russ
p.s. if it isn't enough, then what do you call Solaris with the GNU utilities installed? GNU/Solaris? Heck no -- you call it Solaris.
If Linux is really GNU/Linux, then FreeBSD is really GNU/FreeBSD.
-russ
Well, yes, RMS deserves his place in history. the kicker is he FUCKING HAS IT. Everybody and their mother's brother knows who the hell he is, and who/what GNU is. RMS just has his undies in a bundle because the HURD didn't get out the door before Linux did. It is called Linux because that is what Linus wanted to call it (after Freax). Everthing else came after. If the underlying OS was really such a pittance, as some of you GNU zealots claim, then one would have to conjecture that some other kernel would have come out sooner.
Yet there is the HURD, still sitting on release 0.2 for forever... Not such a trivial addition, even if it looks that way when comparing lines of code (a rather stupid comparision anyways.)
Some of you people have way too much time on your hands to be bickering over this. Let RMS call it what he wants. Everyone with sense will just call it Linux, 'cause that's the way it is. There is just one caveat: All you "gnulix" idiots ought to be kicked in the head.
I'm making note of this in my palm III right now.
My karma thanks you.
btw, what utility is in calling it GNU/Linux other than to be an advertisement for the FSF, and isn't that counter to the higher purpose?
Actually, SunOS refers to the parts of Solaris that are not graphical. This would include all of the standard UNIX utils, etc., not just the kernel.
SunOS + XWindows = Solaris
I find it interesting that he used SuSE (which has to be the most massive distribution out there) to get his numbers. What I would really like to see is the figures from Redhat, Slackware, and Debian.
linus called his kernel something like "freax" i believe.
it was another hacker who came up with the name linux and persuaded linus to use that.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
the numbers for the minimal set of packages necessary to build and run the OS.
Sounds like the RMS Titanic to me...
Since the kernel is GPLed, I don't see the point. Short of replacing the kernel, you'll never have a completely non-GPLed Linux distribution.
Besides, if you want non-GPLed, one of the BSDs would be a better choice.
If it was a democracy, then everyone would have to concur with the majority's decision. Linux is an anarchy, which means you can call it whatever you like.
Why couldn't Yggdrasil have called the L/G/X distribution something pronounceable, like ...
GLiX? It would probably have caught on. Oh well
Seems like Linux is FSF's best advertiser. I wish talented programmers would abandon political hairsplitting for programming. GCC and the Linux kernel didn't get created in this manner.
:D
Oh well.
P.S. Nearly everyone has been kicked by Tom from #perl except for Larry. Larry doesn't IRC.
Log
This is the kind of mindless drivel that complete brainwashing results in.
According to the majority of those who use free or open source software as a viable system, the only way to profit should be through selling support and documentation. According to your post, Tom should apparently be some sort of pauper, since he obviously shouldn't contribute to books that are sold for *gasp* money.
RMS ironically criticized Tom Christiansen once as well. While I was not there, I heard about the incident. Apparently RMS was complaining to Tom that the good Perl documentation must be paid for, and similar topics along that line. For those people who don't know, the standard perl distribution comes with hundreds, if not thousands, of documentation. Free, with the source. RMS was completely unaware of this, but chastised Tom reguardless. Someone had the intelligence to show RMS some of this wonderful documentation, at which point he shut up.
RMS wants it called GNU/Linux to give prper credit
to the FSF utils that lie atop the kernel.
As you rightly pointed out, trying to judge the contributions to GNU-Linux in terms of source-code lines of a commercial distro is absurd.
This is like counting the fuzzy dice that hang from a 57 Chevy rear-view mirror as part of the core Chevrolet distro.
RMS seems to be complaining that more media attention should be paid to the _freedom_ that the GNU-GPL brings to software development. Let's not get into a personality/popularity contest. Linus is a great guy, but he is no RMS.
RMS has set the software development process free.
Can we all get along?
Lets all just keep on writing excellent code.
cheers
smithdog
Tom has a good reason to be pissed. RMS seems to think that the Perl Docs should be redistibutable by any means nessisary. Tom is sick of people copying his work without permission and republishing it in their books on Perl.
What RMS seems to want is REPUBLISHABLE free text, without having to be concerned with who wrote it or how those people support themselves. Much of how Tom supports himself is through his writing. If someone said that you should work for free against your will, it would stick in your craw as well.
RMS's biggest problem is that his ego is taking over. He is trying to take credit for things that he is only minorly responsible for. The FSF is not responsible for most of Linux. I also wonder how much of the FSF code was written by RMS himself.
If there is a cult leader in the Open Source community, it is not Linus or Larry Wall (even though that may be on his business cards) or Eric Raymond. It is RMS. Cult leaders prey on the delusions and gulibility of their followers. So, it seems, does RMS.
GNU this!
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Why can't a demon penguin be associated with something I agree with!
All this politics is tripe. I don't see a strong argument anywhere here other than that the author feels that RMS and the FSF are power tripping... and if they are, I don't really care!
Personally, I don't think Linux would be at all strong as it is today if it were not for the GPL. But I'm not going to call it GNU/Linux either. If the GPL was not tough enough to demand intellectual property rights, there would be no end to the bickering and in-fighting.
Am I insane?
It all makes sense now!
Erm, it's Debian GNU/Linux already...
Did Tom Christiansen actually read what he wrote and think about it? Because by his reasoning, Linux should not be called "Linux."
After all, how many lines of code needed to build a typical running "Linux" system are actually part of the Linux kernel source? I bet it is a much smaller number than the number of lines accredited to the FSF.
This rant is just stupid.
Umm, am I mistaken or are the splits between the Linux distributions far more friendly than the rifts between the *BSD camps? I really think that *BSD people complaining about this issue ate too many red herrings for lunch :-)
Oh and about Corel, aren't they going to base their "distribution" on an already existing distribution, contributing back their improvements? I heard rumor of just that.
Since, without all of those and many more, English wouldn't be what it is today, we should change the name of the language. And for that matter, we should be sure to give credit to the European Catholic monks for keeping the Western writing system and literacy alive during the dark ages. Every time we use the Latin character set we should give credit to those monks and we should become Catholics, because that was the belief of those who kep the system alive.
We don't necessarily need to take on the beliefs of those to whom we are indebted. I'm thankful to William the Bastard for bringing the French infusion into England and increasing the vocabulary of the language. However, I think he was a jerk for doing it as well. I'm going to continue to use the words his actions infused, but I don't have to give him credit every time I use one.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Agreed, RMS deserves credit for his vision and work. But who defines "credit?"
When I buy something, I decide how much I can afford. There are plenty of car dealers who ask how big of a monthly payment you want. They then decide how long you should pay. Give RMS credit but do not allow him to define it!
# Why waste your time on political bullshit?
# Shut up and write some code that we _need_, not code so you
# can justify creating your own non-FSF distribution.
Why waste your time telling him he is wasting his time?
It is his time to "waste", not yours. If he wants to do spend his valuable time doing it, why the hell should you care?
I am always annoyed by people who care what other people do with their time. When you are Tom's slavemaster, you can care what he does with his time. Until then, his time is his to do with as he pleases, and his time, wasted or not, does not concern you.
That's mostly irrevlent
FSF's contrbution is less the C compiler, and more their licence. However I don't plan on claiming that only RMS could have come up with that licence. Progrmmers are by and large inventave people, witness the many licences they have come up with. I find it likely that a GPL style licence would have been invented by someone else if RMS hadn't made it.
While I agree that Richard's pissed off some people with his rhetorical style, we have bigger problems to solve than this.
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
It means that Tom causes friction and conflict wherever he goes.
A lot of meaningful contributions to Perl have been aborted/stalled
due to Tom's capricious nature. Tom often hides behind logic that is totally based
on his perception of reality. Those who question that reality are often subject to insults and ridicule.
Only thick-skinned people survive on p5-porters. At least he doesn't control
the mailing list membership.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Solaris is also SunOS
Its a Marketing thing to distinguish SunOS (BSD)
From SunOS (SVR4)
$ uname -sr
SunOS 5.5.1
(Solaris 2.5.1)
Even when the Marketeers catapaulted to Solaris 7
it is still SunOS 5.7
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
You're right and wrong. The GPL obviously doesn't explicitly set out to keep people from making money. But for a large number of applications, it is next to impossible to make enough money writing (or supporting, customizing, or whatever) GPL'd software to support themselves.
Since RMS doesn't really care if people make any money writing software (and he is obviously content with making under $10k/year), he conveniently ignores many commercial factors when making his "moral" arguments. People like me would rather not live in poverty, so we need also need to address the commercial side of writing software and making a profit.
RMS doesn't seem to be anti-commercial - just anti-proprietary - but he leaves no room in his "world-view" for people to survive while writing free software as their primary job. I think that is what the original poster was trying to say.
Since when has an IRC channel been a place to pop in, irritate the hosts and not expect to get flamed/kicked/banned? What planet have you been doing IRC on?
Netiquette is dead. Long live the kick/ban/ignore/killfile.
Like anything else on the 'Net: lurk, stay on topic, don't ask FAQ's, don't annoy the hosts/moderators and you will be treated nicely. Don't like it? Start your own channel. #cowards_perl maybe.
Get off my lawn.
Mr. Christiansen should be aware that it is far easier to run a Perl-free Linux than a GNU-free Linux.
s/Linux/GNU\/Linux/g
rpm -e perl
---------------------
John 3:16 - God's Public License
Lots of people have commented that gcc is far different from most utility contributions, because a good compiler is simply much more difficult to write. That assertion is certainly a true one.
However, writing a compiler is not an impossible task, by any stretch of the imaginaton, and the pay off in reputation more than makes up for the limited number of people willing and able to take on such a project. Even though there may only be a few thousand people capable of writing a decent C compiler, the motivation to write a free one would be huge if one did not already exist.
As an example, I present to you lcc, a compiler developed at Princeton that is mostly free. I know that its license is not as free as gcc's, but it is free enough to show that the creation of a free compiler is not an unrepeatable task.
Because nothing did.
Just another person saying that you got it right on spot! ;)
Most people now and then tends to act a little bit egomanically when they think they're not given the credits for what they have done (and I agree with RMS that he and FSF have not been given the credit they deserve in mainstream articles, although I think that renaming the system is a BAD idea).
The sollution to this is simply to ignore their claims (or even better, think the situation over and give them the credits we think they are worth which not necessarily mount up to what they claim), NOT to try to crush their ego by replacing their code with new one!
If we would do that we would most likely be stuck in an eternal loop where we constantly replace perfectly working code with new one when we think the original creator goes a little bit over the top...
'nuff said.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde
I was being sarcastic. I love Emacs. I love XEmacs. I know that XEmacs is based off of the emacs19 sources, but from what I understood they splintered quite a bit towards the end of 19 development (because of RMS), and have splintered even more since then. Personally I use Emacs more than XEmacs, but that's just because it's what's installed.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde
Clearly
L(unix)
Over
NT
Everyday.
How about this for another distro name??
It'snot linux but a flattering copy of unix.
or
L.U.N.A.T.I.C
Linus
Understands
Not
All
The People Can Be
In
Control
Cheers,
Myrhillion
myrh@javanet.com
I'm looking in /bin right now, and yes, technically the programs I use daily are smallish and should be easy to recreate - in Perl even, as one effort is doing.
The fact that they're smallish and easy programs to write individually doesn't invalidate them.... cat, gawk, cp, bash, chmod, dd, df, mail, gunzip, login, grep, etc.... These are programs we'd mostly be lost without (or at least suitable replacements for....)
--- http://foo.ca
Writing a compiler from the ground up may have academic utility, but I don't think it makes a better compiler. Where are they going to get the poeple to test a buggy compiler when everyone else is using GCC? And you can't just use egcs because it was based on GCC. ARRHGH The GPL may be a bit restrictive and based on an extreme philosophy, but rewriting almost 10% of the applications just so you can say there's no GNU software on the system is much worse. If its not broken, don't fix it.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Why did you go to all this trouble? A byte count is not really a fair way to assess someone's contribution.
In your valuation system Linus' role is completely trivial, for example.
I wonder what the real reason for your grudge against the FSF is.
So, Christiansen wants an FSF-free Linux distribution, but he's not above using FSF-derived tools like the EGCS compiler? Please.
The fact is, according to his own data, FSF is the largest single contributor of code to the S.u.S.E. distribution. The Linux kernel itself is just a tiny (though important) fraction of this.
And it's not like anyone is FORCING us to credit GNU for their contribution (apart from keeping their copyright notices intact), since there is no advertising clause in the GPL. It's purely a matter of conscience.
If Tom Christiansen wants a totally "Artistic" distribution, nothing is stopping him except the massive time investment of thousands of people that would be required. It wouldn't accomplish anything especially useful, though.
Tom should stop whining.
Peace and love, y'all
til Corel, Apple and all those other open source "supporters" finish doing their number on Linux.
What was FSF's motivation? Why did the FSF write all these great tools? If they don't like what's going on, they should make steps to change it. If RMS doesn't like Linux being called Linux insted of 'GNU/Linux', he can get fuct and go off and work on his little happy hurd kernel thingy .... The point I'm trying to make is simple, If RMS et al doesn't approve the current situation, they should make steps to correct it. I'm actually shocked that everyone is saying that the FSF is responsible for all the great things that have happened with linux because they wrote the C compiler?, I thought these 'I started it so I own it' ideas were resricted to the corporate world, and everything that I thought RMS was against ... guess I was wrong. They should write their own kernel or something, I don't care if they go take a flying fuck, I think this whole thing is stupid.
Stupid People Piss Me Off
-- Hawk Newton
I came. I saw. I coded.
Before I use software, I research the author(s) to see if my personality meshes with his/hers/theirs. If it doesn't, I have to use something else -- no matter how good the sofware is.
That's just the way I am. Idealism for the sake of idealism. Peace, my brothers.
-Sarcasm Boy
Why add GNU to the name ??
Do we want to start naming products Water/Coke, Fat/Dougnut and Plastic/Computer ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Yes,
GNU/RedHat, GNU/Caldera, GNU/Mozilla.
Since the argument is gone that OSF Software makes up >50% of all Linux distributions, the only argument left is that Linux was "inspired" by the GPL Idea..
Give credit where credit is due, like Documentation/Thanks, but don't change the product
name.
Linux distributions may be based heavily on GNU software but the thing we love and admire is still "Linux".
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Linux is just a kernel. The kernel is the operating system, therefore the operating system is called Linux. Yes, to make it useful, you need several utilities, many made by GNU, and wonderful they are, but that in no way implies that Linux isn't Linux without GNU. While Tom's idea is a bit radical, he makes an excellent point, in the blunt Tom Way. BSD style utilities are not the right idea, that's Bad For Linux. So is GNU/Linux. What's right for Linux is for people to respect it as a collection of the minds of everyone across the world, contributing solely for the cause of making a better mouse trap. This mine is bigger philosophy has got to go.
If not for GNU foundation and GNU GPL license
Linux would not be where it is now.
GNU GPL is viral and that is GOOD.
Greedy Perl documentation writers can go and
screw themselfs, not that is matters too much
for Linux.
p.s. I'm very sorry I bought his book, I need to
check with the store if I can return it. I paid
$$$ for that stuff, so him pissing on GNU/RMS
pisses me off!
Vassili Leonov
But all the program were availble and free long before GNU where started. And could easy be replased by an alternative. I have had plans to make a BSD / Linux installation, starting from Debian. The replacemant shuld not be that hard i think, I got the idea when i read rms article but have not had time to create a test host yet.
/ Balp, Tierd of GPL....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you question RMS, GPL etc. then you're automatically not a nice person?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
GNU == RMS's ego. Despite the fact that many people from different non-GNU projects contributed to Linux, RMS INSISTS that his project be given the credit with GNU/Linux.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
So how do you know it's the "right thing to do" then?
Oh, wait, I know, let me guess. "Because RMS said so!"
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Unrelix?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
If you want to call it GNU/Linux then go ahead, but I find it objectionable that RMS and his minions keep insisting that I call it GNU/Linux because they wrote some of the code. Others have written some of the code as well.
RMS has a long rant on the FSF site about the BSD "advertising clause" where each of the authors of portions of BSD licensed code can put their little copyright notices/messages/whatever. Yet RMS seems to want a GNU-only advertising clause in the Linux name.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
This way you can achieve freedom. Freedom from the FSF software politics that will ultimatly marginalize Linux
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
jon, i suggest you re-read your MIT history. yep, rms formalised and evangelised the notion of free software, but hand-me-down open source projects were the lifeblood of MIT (and probably every other University with a decent computer lab in the 60s and 70s). open source is just the continuation of the culture surrounding academic minicomputers, particularly the DEC and PDP.
and if writing a C compiler is hard then why do they make CS graduates do it?
-- need more time?
I highly agree. I read that thread "GNU == unspeakable evil" on gnu.misc.discuss. It was completely ridiculous: Christiansen got rubbed the wrong way by the FSF claiming that there was no free Perl documentation. He went on long raves and rants to show how stupid the FSF is and that the Perl doc was free. Problem was he was talking about free beer, they were talking about free speech. But no matter how many people pointed that difference out to him, he wouldn't stop complaining. And complain he did, in the most hideous ways.
From that whole incident, I got the impression that Christiansen might be the worlds greatest programmer, but outside of technical matters it's almost impossible to reason with him on a logical basis. This posting is just more of the same: come to a conclusion, scurry around for some arguments and season with a lot of insults (like 'scummy').
I am not the biggest RMS fan in the world, but I'd rather think about RMS arguments (which at least contain some logic) than Christiansens hodge-podge of mainly enormous anger. It's very sad to see somebody of great technical talent like Christiansen foam from the mouth so much.
No, we don't want to call it "Unrecognized/Linux". As others have said, we want to call it Linux. It's the FSF jihad that wants to add to the name. By their own argument, it's time for them to start calling it "Unrecognized/Linux", right? After all, credit where credit is due, right? We wouldn't have a system without that contribution, right?
See, this is all nonsense. People can call it what they want. If Stallman wants to call it "GNU/Linux" or "MyLinux" or even "RMS/Linux", go ahead. But he now ought to stop trying to force his ludicrous viewpoint on others.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
People can call it what they want. They don't need RMS or anyone else berating them because they use common terms to refer to Linux.
What you have demonstrated is the absurdity of the jihad's position. Linus is way down there at 726, yet we all call it what he says. And where is the moaning and complaining of the other authors who play such a big role in the success of Linux? Why doesn't Don Becker demand that it be called "Don/Linux" or "NASA/Linux"? Why doesn't Alan Cox or Ted T'so cry for recognition?
Because they are grownups. Because they don't have this jihad mentality of the FSF.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I stand by what I said: he's trying to force people to use his terms. There are different levels and degrees of force. Obviously a gun to the head is one degree. Another is being such an obnoxious boor that you refuse to let another person use in your presence whatever words they want to describe an operating system without hurling insults or pitching a fit or interrupting them to "correct" them (as though they had misused the English language).
So please tell me who's throwing the tantrum here: Me, when I insist on the right to call Linux what I want, or RMS, who can't even engage in a conversation about it unless it's called "[insert his useless, ugly phrase here]"?
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Sorry, it's afternoon. I just ate lunch, and I guess I'm a little sluggish. What does this have to do with what I said?
(BTW, I like that "Fettered Software Foundation" thing! I'll have to remember that...)
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Which is a lot more than we can say for RMS and the FSF jihad, sadly.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
>in 1948th place with 0.002% of the code.
Actually Linus is mentioned under three different entries, with a total of roughly 0.02% of the code.
I didn't see any entries for Alan Cox, & offhand I don't know the names of any other important contributors/maintainers of the Linux source.
How does that saying about figures, calculations, & liars go?
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Sure we appreciate what the FSF have given us. Linux wouldn't be where it is today without their contribution. But that doesn't mean we have to hand them the deeds to the family jewels. Linux has evolved and spun away from tight association with the FSF's code. They're just going to have to get used to that, if it really does bother them that much.
Macka
It seems liek a lot of work to do just so you can be smug about a name.
This is a great example of how ineffective the free software community can be. Are you willing to spend time replacing components just to snub someone?
The work done by the FSF should be considered DONE.
Build some applications or something else that Linux actually NEEDS.
Even if Stallman were the devil himself, replacing all FSF packages with non-FSF packages would still be a colossal waste of time, with no performance improvments from the work, and perhaps even performance degradation.
Meanwhile, Linux still has very few applications to draw Windows users to the platform.
This whole point is moot anyway - no one is going to bother following through on Tom's proposal, so there's no point in anymore inane discussion.
And Linus used FSF tools.
Could he have used another group of tools at that time? Maybe, maybe not.
The fact that someone else out of sheer luck could have decided to develop what was needed in the absence of FSF can not be used to dimish their role.
"Who's this Newton guy anyway? He did almost nothing, if he hasn't come out with those laws someone else would." Now we can invalidate Newton's contribution based on this phrase, can't we?
It was not my intention to compare RMS/FSF and Newton point by point. I was just trying to say that if someone DOES a thing, it is not fair to dimish the effort just by saying that "if X haven't done it someone else would certanly have done"
I'd like to see a /. poll on this one. How many people support RMS's insistence that it be called "GNU/Linux", and how many people think that "Linux" is the proper name?
- dria
not a Spaniard.
Columbus was also Italian.
Only a minor correction of fact.
As any Philosophy, Math, or Science professor and they will tell you that the idea 'freedom' exists only in you mind.
Everytime there is a requirement, rule, axiom, necessary condition, etc., one's freedom has been limited.
One can say, 'as free as possible.' One can even say 'the best (freeest)(sp?) of all possible worlds.' One cannot say 'freedom exists' without forgetting a lot of facts that negate that assertion.
For me, 'free of charge' is about as good as it gets, and I go with that. But then again, I'm just a dirty stinking blood sucking lawyer (law student). So what do I know? I made hypocricy my career, and hypocricy constraint in itself.
Yogis say, freedom in meditation. Coders say, freedom of code. Romantics say, freedom of spirit. There is no absolute freedom.
You won't get that in any dictionary. You have to think first...
For ease of comprehension, I'm going to write things phonetically.
if most of the users-space tools *were* from GNU, that *still* wouldn't make it GNU/Linux.
Hrm.... I do wonder why you say "from GNU"--are you indicating Noo, or do you mean G'noo? If you mean G'noo, then I find your comments about Microsoft and Windows very confusing--
Look at Microsoft Windows: most of the applets that ship with Windows, for instance, are not written by Microsoft at all.
If you were consistent, wouldn't you mean to say that `most of the applets that ship with Windows are not from Windows'? That doesn't make much sense, does it? Well, it seems to make about as much sense as saying that `most of the system components of the G'noo OS are not from G'noo'. Sure, many parts of G'noo may not be made by FSF-members, but they are part of G'noo. All parts of G'noo are parts of G'noo--saying something else doesn't make a lot of sense.
The misunderstandings that people keep presenting as indications of their own illiteracy are absurd enough to make me wonder what's wrong with the world's water supply. Do you really think that `XXX/YYY' means `YYY, created by XXX'? Can someone explain to me which English text-book/dictionary/writers' guide/whatever you pulled that meaning of "/" out of?
Also:
The OS is truly the kernel...
No, it's not. A kernel is something low-level for software to interface. An OS is a system, which contains much more than just this one thing (typically).
I have to go to class.
-rozzin.
An anonymous user wrote: In point of fact, this entire discussion was started by RMS, who decided that Linux should be referred to as GNU/Linux. Tom deserves kudos for pointing out the fallacy in that argument.
Should everything compiled with GCC and debugged with GDB be referred to with the 'GNU/' prefix? Maybe everything anyone has ever viewed on paper should be referred to with a 'Gutenberg/' prefix.
The fact is, that the GNU suite without Linux was not an operating system. It wasn't until Linux came along that you had an operating system. Credit is definitely due the FSF, but it does not own Linux. The community does.
Ami Ranguli wrote: I don't see that it's either. Free software contributors do what they enjoy doing. Code gets reused. It's something of a weak link that this community only has one compiler. Diversity is great, let's have more.
Nobody has to use a new tool if they don't want to. We've got at least two free makes, at least two free lex's, I can't see that it will hurt us to have more tools.
It's not your right to tell other people how to spend their coding time, or what motivation is "acceptable".
An anonymous user said: If everything with a GNU license is prefaced with 'GNU/', RMS and FSF will certainly get a lot of free advertising. It's true that without the GNU utilities Linux would not be an operating system; however, it's equally true that up until Linux came along, the popularity of the GNU suite didn't hit anything like its current levels. No operating system, a lot less exposure to the world.
Perhaps GNU utilities should be referred to as Linux/GNU utilities.
An anonymous user wrote: No Unix has ever had the popularity and growth rate of its user base that Linux enjoys. Unix installations have always had a much smaller market share than Windows installations, and Linux is the only POSIX OS that has shown any chance of challenging Windows much at all. So I guess I would have to stick with my viewpoint.
'Universally popular', sure, but in a very small universe.
I agree, the mature and productive thing to do here is let it slide.
Personally, I am a great fan of both the GNU project and Perl. I own several of Christiansen's books and I think he's a great author. But I am sad to see this petty response to Stallman.
I switched to Linux largely because I've been a daily user of Emacs for the last 10 years; without it, I might have stayed with M$ and never known better!
Am I the only one who's noticed that the column of percentages up there only add to about 50? Doesn't really change the argument but, seems fishy... or is there a good reason why 50% of the code is unaccounted for?
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
I agree with Tom, but for different reasons. I don't call it GNU/Linux (a) because I'm lazy, and (b) because I'll call it anything I damn well please. It's all about freedom, baby!
But that's the problem, isn't it? FSF appear to feel they're getting less "name recognition" than the Open Source guys, and try to compensate by "hijacking" a project they're contributing to. It would be as if Tom Christiansen insisted Perl should be called Tom/Perl because of his contributions.
No disrespect to Tom intended, etc. :-)
BTW, is there a good moving BSD linux project yet? I like BSD, but am getting really tired of the splits in the BSD groups.
What splits in the BSD groups?
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. BSDi as well. And the most recent of those (OpenBSD) was years ago.
Splits in Linux dists are far more numerous (RedHat, Debian, Caldera, Slackware, SuSE, Corel (soon to be released). . .)
N
Tom's example of a "well-loaded RedHat Linux server" doesn't quite cut it. Instead, look at a MINIMAL system, with just the absolute essentials. Count only what you need to survive. You don't define an OS by how many applications you install (and you certainly don't give weight to extra bytes), but by what is absolutely required.
Remove gcc and make and and tell me how far your system goes.
Tom, I say, put your coding where your mouth is and replace everything from the FSF and see how easy it is.
Linus has said that every single line from his original kernel has been replaced. NOTHING remains from the orignal. If you replaced all the FSF utilities, RMS would still deserve credit for making it possible in the first place.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
egcs: experimental GNU compiling system
At least they know how to give credit.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
> how much [...] did [RMS] actually right [sic]
He wants it called GNU/Linux, not RMS/Linux.
> If you wanted credit, it should have been a requirement in the GPL. Sheesh.
He's not suing anyone or forcing anyone to call it GNU/Linux, he's just stating his belief that the FSF deserves credit based on its accomplishments.
For all those who keep saying "freedom means I can call it what I want," it also means he RMS can ask for credit if he wants.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Wake up folks. It's a name. Arguing over this only makes you look like a bunch of PHB's.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
prefix Linux with GNU - this makes no sense. Linux *is* the kernel, not the utilities. If someone wanted to re-write all the FSF utilities and create a Linux distro it would *still* be Linux so long as the Linux kernel was used - in other words, the lcd that separates all OSes is the kernel. So really, the wrong question is being asked. How much of a Linux distro is FSF doesn't matter - instead we would need to ask how much of the *kernel* was written by FSF. Even if FSF wrote Linux kernel code, it wouldn't make much sense, no more than calling Beowulf NASA/Linux. Good thing we are protected from the FSF by the GPL (isn't that ironic)
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
So the FSF wrote 10% of the code, which is the most. It is arguambly the most critical part of the system, and it certainly "deserves" recognition on the order of Linus himself. Therefore, (I claim) this "survey" is essentially meaningless.
You dismiss the fact that most of the software that is under the GPL is irrelevant. Certainly it may make them able to claim less credit, but it isn't irrelevant.
The thing that's silly here is the name game. GNU, as a name, is essentially meaningless. Linux, as a name is also meaningless. Everyone who cares knows that Linux == GNU/Linux. Even people who don't care recognise the importance of FSF in the role of the development of Linux.
But RMS is not the only one who is guilty of the name game. The silly Open Source people can also be accused of it.
In the end, I really wish RMS would just give up. It's an essentially meaningless debate, and for all intents and purposes can be ignored, except when talking directly to RMS. The way RMS is acting stikes me as fairly immature, but people on the other side of the issue are giving me fewer and fewer reasons to side with them.
This is all very very stupid. Linux needs GNU (despite idiotic claims to the contrary), GNU need linux, let's all recogize that and get on with it.
Maybe if someone
(i.e. Linus) would say: yes Linux is really GNU/Linux, but we're sticking with the old name for convention, and we're declare a special linux holiday devoted to recognize RMS and the FSF, like say "GNU Awareness Month."
Or how about that the nux in Linux stands for GNU.
Yes, it's all very silly, but really, it's all silly.
I don't care, please just stop this nonsense.
Linux is an operating system comprised of a kernel maintained by Linus Torvalds and a few others, with contributions from hundreds (thousands?) of people from around the world, and some utilities distributed/freely available from GNU sites, which have been written by a plethora of individuals, and contributed to/improved on by many thousands of others. This is a team effort, people! Heck, I've made and sent patches to my kernel, and to various other programs as well.
;) ), and stand back in awe of this great creation which has grown from the minds of thousands of thousands of programmers around the world, and not just from a few people or one or two organizations. Bleh!
Let's let Linux be Linux!. For me, it's easier to say than "GNU/Linux". Linus + thousands of people maintain the kernel source. RMS/FSF + thousands of people maintain the source for the various utilities, and there are utilitities based on BSD code, and many programs are written from completely original code.
Let's just call it "Linux" (it's easier to say, and we all know that the best programmers are the laziest people!
Let's be bi-partisan and not quibble about names.
Matthew Vanecek For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me. I'm always getting i
Bad example. RedHat does not require all distributions of Linux to be called "RedHat Linux" (otherwise we'd have "Stampede Redhat") whereas RMS wants all distributions to call themselves "GNU/Linux."
While I agree that GNU/Linux is a crappy name, I have real problems with this methodology of proving it.
You're missing the point. Here's an explaination:
A) "GNU/Linux" is a bad name, RMS is a bad person, and the FSF is a bad organization. These things are so obvious as not to require proof. In fact, your desire for proof indicates a dangerous lack of faith. I'm not at all sure that there's a place for you in Christiansen's free soft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hopen source movement.
B) Since we know the conclusion already, any evidence or logic which tends to support that conclusion is, ex post facto, valid.
Therefore, your objection is fallacious and deceptive and you should be ashamed of yourself.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
That goes to show you just how mentally secure a lot of the Slashdot readers are. And don't bother flaming, or calling me a troll, you'll just further prove my point.
"You're all 'mentally insecure', and if you call me a troll, that proves me right!"
You're assuming that anybody will accept your bizarre "logic". Well, I don't. You're a troll. You've got a perfect right to be a troll, of course, but that is indeed what you are.
By the way, if people called you an idiot for suggesting this, and now they call Christiansen an idiot for suggesting the same thing, I'd say they're just being consistent.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
. . . and that's why he's so important to this movement.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
BTW, is there a good moving BSD linux project yet? I like BSD, but am getting really tired of the splits in the BSD groups.
What, you'd like those same problems better if Christiansen succeeded in porting them to Lignux?
Hmm . . . Maybe that came off a bit too sarcastic.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
The primary goal here is to pursue a personal grudge against Stallman, right? And the secondary goal is to port BSDish fragmentation, forking, and petty personal bullshit to Linux.
So what would Christiansen accomplish by quietly going and using another OS? Nothing. The port-everything-to-perl gambit seems not to have attracted much support, so he's trying another tack. I applaud this. Christiansen apparently has nothing to offer the community but his grudges and his rage, so he's doing everything in his power to bring us the benefit of those qualities as often as he is able.
Here's a point that illustrates Christiansen's wisdom as a leader, and his commitment to good software: In a discussion on the perl mailing list about the port-everything-to-perl idea, it was repeatedly stated that the point of this was to make the full set of common unix shell utilities easily available on all platforms. So at some point, somebody pointed out that the unix versions of these things all expect globbing to be handled by the shell, while not all shells in other OS's do that. Well, Christiansen got a bit pissed off about that, and slapped this guy down. You see, globbing is a "shell issue", and therefore Christiansen has a good excuse for blowing it off. Apparently, it's "anti-unix" to write "portable" code that works wherever it runs. The solution to the problem is to deny responsibility: "We're porting this so you can use it everywhere, but if you can't use it somewhere, that's not our problem". Fine, it's his code and he can do as he likes.
But you know what?
When I build and run gawk in dos (where the shell does not glob), gawk globs. My scripts behave predictably, on Lignux or dos or BeOS. I just can't see why Christiansen would bother writing code that doesn't work -- except, maybe, that the porting thing is an excuse, and the real reason is his little grudge against Stallman. If you "don't feel like" writing the code that needs to be written for the program to do what it was designed to do, that's fine -- but don't pretend that you're a programmer.
Stallman has ideological motivations, which often prompt him to do things which may not be necessary. Christiansen has ideological excuses, which he invokes to blow off things that are necessary, or else to give rein to his petty personal animosities. There's a very big difference there.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Look, hardly anybody calls Linux "GNU/Linux" -- and why not? Because there's no non-GNU Linux to distinguish it from. Right? Right.
But if this twit creates a Linux with all the GNU stuff replaced by BSD stuff, then there will be a need to distinguish the two. So, we'll have "BSD/Linux" and "GNU/Linux". The two will have the same kernel, but they'll be differentiated by the shell, etc. ("sufficient unto the shell are the utilities thereof"
I don't give too much of a shit, personally, but the only way that the term "GNU/Linux" will ever be generally used is if Christiansen gets his way with this little tantrum of his -- and I, for one, get off on the irony enough to put up with the extra syllables.
Go, Tom! Throw that tantrum! Wave those statistics! You're on a roll, don't stop now!
:)
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
it seems clear that most of it is done. . . Where did you read otherwise?
I just assumed that if he now wants to use BSD utilities, then the perl thing must have dried up and blown away.
It seems as if that was a bad assumption.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Software was free before the FSF,
That's true, but no attempt had been made to implement legal safeguards for that freedom, and nobody had clearly defined what that freedom meant, or why it was worth keeping.
The guys who wrote the U.S. Declaration of Independence didn't invent a single one of the ideas in it. So by your logic, it's completely irrelevant . . .
and remains so despite their efforts.
In plain english, you're a paranoid idiot. What you mean by "freedom" is probably something like this: "freedom for proprietary developers to screw users". Stallman is talking about freedom for the users, and for the code itself. If you can't grasp that, don't bother trying to comment on it. Of course, you may have no clear idea at all of what you mean by "free". You may just be a yapping cretin with a yawning void between his ears.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I grew up on PCs too and remember jacks about free compilers, linkers, editors etc (free as in source code freely available). I remember a lot of crappy *shareware*!
Anyways, the FSF and GNU were started at about the same time that the PC was born, so your point is somewhat moot.
And to answer your first point: anybody *could* have filled its place, but nobody did. Whereas in the case of kernels e.g. there are a couple of alternatives to Linux...
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
FSF is anything but free. I'd rather give money than my intellectual property.
That wouldn't mean a thing because you don't seem to have much of the latter to contribute.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
I WISH FOR NUTTYX 2.2!
http://www.yellow5.com/nuttyx
So, let me get this staight: You think MS, Apple, Sun, etc. have the right to claim part ownership of any software I created\compiled with one of their compilers, or link to their libraries?
Give me a break.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
> gcc, on the other hand, supports every architecture under the sun. gcc also compiles and runs on
> every architecture under the sun. Finally, it optimizes on all of those architectures, in most cases only
> slightly worst than the best compilers out there.
NOW. I have little experience with gcc, but you can't expect me to believe that the first public release had all these capabilities.
gcc has (obviously) grown and matured over the years. No doubt the first version was a decent compiler, but people (largely folks outside the FSF, I'd wager) have spent a lot of hours and a lot of sweat improving it.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
It's called irony, a literary convention often used to make a point in a way that exposes the absurdity of a previous comment.
You might get to it in your next high school Engish Lit class.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I think the problem is that it's always been a little ambiguous what Linux actually is. To Linus, when he began it, the kernel had no name; it was called Linux when it was released. When Linux distributions really began to appear, Linux was always the kernel, and the apps that were used with it were generally limited to the GNU utilities and apps such as Emacs. However, now that the OS --- in which I include the kernel, utilities and apps --- is becoming more popular, we're talking less about the kernel and more about the whole system. I therefore use "Linux" to refer to a complete Linux-based system, such as a Debian installation, and "the Linux kernel" to refer to the kernel. I for one don't want to have to say "GNU/Linux" or "GPL/Linux": GNU have done great things for the free software community, but, as this article shows, they weren't the only ones.
And please don't complain about Richard Stallman. The guy's given us a lot --- looking a gift horse in the mouth has never been a profitable strategy.
A plurality of the software is FSF stuff. OK, it's not the majority that FSF'ers would like us to think...
I'd bet if you looked at Solaris, etc. a majority of the software would not be written by SUN, but only a plurality.
Besides, do we really want to call it Unrecognized/Linux?
That's a very good point.
However, no one has an intellectual stake in fat/doughnut. It is reasonable, IMO, to have Bose-Einstein condensation, Bogoliubov-deGennes equations, etc (yes, I am a physics geek). Calling it GNU/Linux simply respects the fact that FSF software was/is an absolutely essential ingredient in both the creation of and the everyday use of the operating system known as Linux. Perhaps we should come up with some fancy symbol to replace the name alltogether ; )
This is the only lgit reason to call it just Linux.
.01%)... why not acknowledge that most of the software is GPL'd and openly acknowledge other's contributions in the name? Well, the counter to this is as you stated. It is the penultimate argument- what can I say to 'it sounds butt-ugly'? It does!
My objection to calling it just Linux are the ones stated in the article as reasons not to call it GNU/Linux. Linus has maybe 0.01% to do with my system as a whole (granted the most important
lignux?
Yes, the plurality is unrecognized, but that's just like saying that the plurality of something is 'other'
Just because that is what is accepted in society doesn't mean it's either the right thing to do or what should be done.
BTW- I don't know what to do. This is a forum, so people debate. People have an opinion and defend it, by definition.
In response to because RMS said so- many people who oppose GNU/linux monikor do so exactly because RMS, an egomaniac, said so. I throw those people out with the 'because RMS said so' crowd. With the people remaining, let's have a debate.
Why does the 'marketing angle' matter?
So, what's wrong with n% of us calling it Linux, and the other (100-n)% of us calling it GNU/Linux, with both parties arguing consistently about RMS this and butt ugly that?
Maybe they just don't want rms deciding wether a piece of software is free or not.
One should give credit where credit is due! To all us selfless minions! Free shared software was around before the FSF and it will be around long after.
Actually, GPL documentation is just like GPL code. You can change the text and redistribute, but it's got to be GPL'd to. The idea is identical to code, and there is an explanation of this by RMS around somewhere (it may be in the book Open Sources). To my knowledge, it has nothing to do with concepts, and it has been stated that way.
Btw, that part about restricting your freedom to take freedom away from other people "relicense the code under a different license", if you are talking about binary only, etc. is a bit fallacious. The laws to free speech take away my freedom to restrict other's speech. But that's misusing the word freedom. It's more like the GPL takes away your license to take away other people's freedom.
As a counterpoint, without the GPL, you are taking away the author's freedom to have his code freely distributed and modified in an open source fashion. You can't give everyone absolute freedom under any system, even public domain. It's all a matter of what freedoms you think more important. Frankly, I, like other people who have released code under the GPL, think that the freedom of knowledge is more important than the freedom of other people to make money off of my code.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
FreeBSD uses very little GNU software outside of the toolchain, although there is quite a bit of GPLed software (e.g. Perl, CVS, Taylor UUCP). GPLed code (GNU and non-GNU) represents about one-sixth of the source tree; I'd say about half of it is GNU. Feel free to download the source tree and verify this on your own.
As to Tom's article, the only thing that surprises me is that RMS' claim surprised the Linux community. Wake up, people, you've been preaching this guy's gospel (by using and promoting his license) for how many years before you discovered he was a self-centered jerk with a political agenda?
SunOS does *not* refer only to the kernel. Solaris refers to the "operating environment" and also includes OpenWindows and CDE and...prolly some other stuff. But SunOS refers to the BSD (4.x) or SVR4 (5.x) *operating system*. That's what the 'OS' stands for.
The windowing system for Linux isn't written by the FSF. The desktop environments aren't written by the FSF. Hell, the *printing system* isn't written by the FSF. Not that Linux has much of a printing system.
I don't really care what people call Linux. I don't, really. (Of course, I'll call it Linux, because two syllables is really the limit of my vocabulary). But this particular argument is pretty damned facetious.
-k. ^-^ ^D
I agree that RMS deserves some credit, if for nothing else than creating the GPL (which the Linux kernel is covered by), and all the GNU utilities, which are so good that they are not only used in combination with Linux, but also with many other OSes, too. No doubt RMS should be recognized as ONE OF the leaders of the open source movement. I do think he may not be getting the recognition he deserves. But his attempt to force everyone to call it GNU/Linux is simply ludicrous. I am sure RMS would take credit for Linux if he could, because the fact of the matter is, FSF is having trouble getting the Hurd finished (it doesn't even have a random device yet), and I understand that the university of Utah, which originally created the microkernel that the Hurd was based on, has discontinued it. But I say, if RMS wants more recognition, why doesn't he:
1. Try creating his own distribution, calling it GNU Linux... Not GNU/Linux... But a DISTRIBUTION of his own, called GNU Linux, just like Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, or Stampede Linux. This would definitely associate Linux with The Cause.
2. I think he should shake hands with Linus, and recognize Linus's contribution to GNU... After all, though GNU may have ended up being a contribution to Linux, I think it could easily have been done the other way around--that is, Linux could have been considered a contribution to GNU. This would also give RMS more recognition.
Not even any of the free BSD distributions are 100% free of FSF software. Removing the GNU stuff would take a damn lot of work in addition to being pointless and counterproductive. Heck, the first thing I do on a BSD box is install the GNU utilities, just like on any other non-Linux Unix system.
As a separate point, the FSF is responsible for the exsitence and/or freedom of a lot of code they don't hold copyright to. For instance, everything owned by the X Consortium would not have been free if it weren't for the work of the FSF. The same goes for many other entries on that list.
And finally, shouldn't that be the Daemon Penguin? The BSD mascot is not a "Demon".
Actually, the name of the Solaris kernel is SunOS. The name of the operating system as a whole is Solaris. You don't see it called by just the kernel name any more, do you. Hmmm.
RMS may foam at the mouth in person sometimes, but at least his writings are well-reasoned and level-headed - you have to admit that much at least even if you don't agree with his premises. Everything I've seen of TC's public writings has been vicious flamage. Now, maybe that's not a representative sample, but that's all I've personally personally seen.
Interesting. Perhaps that would be the reason the FSF does not use GPL for it's documentation, but rather a different, much simpler license.
Perhaps that is also why copyright covers expressions of ideas rather than ideas themselves.
Clues are good things.
GCC was designed from the start to support multiple target architectures, multiple hosts, and a wide array of optimizations. Designing a framework for an optimizing compiler so that you can compile something from the same code base that will optimize well for many architectures, and can be extended in the future to architectures and languages totally different from anything around when you started, is very impressive.
Trust me, extending the average undergrad project compiler to do good optimization and output code for multiple targets would not really be feasible.
Yes, but for the most part they all suck - not very portable, poor support for even one language standard let alone many, rather crappy optimizations, etc. If you have ever worked in a Unix or embedded software shop, you'd know why the world's proprietary compiler vendors all consider GCC their biggest threat.
Sorry, I get sick of people flaming about the same points over and over again when they are untrue. Since when has courtesy been mandatory at Slashdot High School? :-)
The FSF takes the position that programming examples in manuals are covered by the fair use exception and thus a specific exception for them would be redundant. I'm not sure if I agree with this, I think an explicit exception would be good. But in any case, they don't GPL their docs and don't even particularly try to encourage others to use any specific documentation license, AFAIK.
The difference between an idea and an expression of an idea is in fact fairly clear as far as copyright law is concerned. If I hold copyright on a paper about a particular scientific theory, that gives me no rights whatsoever in the theory itself; I may not preclude others from applying, writing about, or extending my theory.
When the distinction between an idea and expression of an idea is unclear to the point that the idea could not be expressed without effectively copying a copyrighted text, the copyright holder has no standing (at least in US court) to sue over even a literal copy.
So there is no way someone could copyright the concept of socket programming in Perl.
The only form of intellectual property protection that covers an idea rather than an expression is patent law, which the FSF opposes applying to the software domain at all. So no fear of finding patented manuals for FSF software either.
Popular though Linux is today, I bet there are still more total non-Linux installations of GNU utilities and tools than total Linux ones. Pretty much every Unix shop has GNU stuff installed. A very high proportion of embedded developers use GNU tools.
In fact, I think one of the biggest technical wins of Linux in the early days was that you didn't have to install all the GNU utilities and tools on it by hand. Every time I have to deal with an arbitrary limit, or type "gzip -dc somefile.tar.gz | tar xvf -" instead of "tar zxvf somefile.tar.gz", or deal with multiple differently broken vendor C++ compilers in a multiplatform environment, I am reminded of this.
"It absolutely does prevent those things. The best a programmer can do, once he or she has released a product under the GPL, is make money doing peripheral tasks such as making CD-ROMs or consulting. He or she cannot make money from the software itself; it's available for free!"
Nothing in the GPL prevents you from also offering your code under other licenses at the same time (assuming all the GPL'd code is yours). If it's not all yours, you have no business whining that you have the way to license your code anyway you want, so how dare these other people license their code in any way they want, such that if you use it you must follow certain conditions! Why, the very gall!
We're seeing this now. Be, a would-be challenger to Microsoft, can't get a foothold; vendors are looking at installing Linux instead.
Be seems to think they benefit from Linux, since by gaining so much market share mindshare for a non-Microsoft product, it has opened the technology world to the possibility that non-Microsoft products might be better for certain tasks. I agree to some degree; I think at least that their odds would not be any better if Linux never existed.
But even if they are wrong and you're right, let's say FreeBSD (supported primarily by admitted CD-ROM foundry Walnut Creek) had been the one to make it big instead of Linux. Would that make Be's position any stronger?
Of course, you can pretend that this isn't happening if you'd like, but you'll only be ignoring the mounting evidence.
I personally don't mind that this is happening. Really, what you are arguing is that a critical mass of GPL software will doom most proprietary software to oblivion. The only way this could be stopped, according to your theory as I understand it, is for the mass of people working on GPL software to give up and go home. That's not going to happen. So businesses today need to deal with the market reality that GPL code is out there, and find a business model that deals with that fact. Asking GPL programmers to just go home, or to relicense their code under X-like licenses, is not going to change anything.
You mean that the FSF created the C library? Wow, and all this time I thought it was the ANSI C committee who formalized that.
I bet a pretty small proportion of the GNU C library is an implementation of the ANSI standard. A lot of the other stuff is POSIX, BSD, SVR4 and GNU extensions, various "traditional" Unix stuff, I18N support etc. If you think writing all that stuff to be thread-safe, efficient, multi-architecture, multi-platform, and conformant to more standards than you can shake a stick at is easy, you're wrong.
RMS wanted the OS called GNU/Linux and NOT FSF/Linux, referring only to the liscence itself. While you may not agree with the philosiphies RMS is pushing, go ahead an build an OS with a different liscence. Or, you can agree with him and put together another liscence. While Tom does say "A GPL does not GNUware make" he gives little evidence to support this. Whether or not the FSF put in much effort, the GNU name has fame/greatness/guilt by association. RMSs motives can probably not be easily summed up in writing, but he does have them, whatever they are. And they seem to be, on the surface, getting some of his ideals out. And while you may not agree with him, you have to give him credit for his effort and perserverance.
Look somewhere else for a sig.
I don't think anyone can stop the world from calling it Linux now, the cat's out of the bag, the point is moot.
I also would like to see what percent of several distributions falls into the following categories:
GPL'ed
LGPL'ed
other licences
I mean, even if FSF did not write the software, they wrote the license, the advocated for the concept, and they inspired thousands.
And how much of this software would have been written so efficiently, beautifully, or quickly, if there were no Emacs?
Bravery, Kindness, Clarity, Honesty, Compassion, Generosity
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Looks as though being a perl god does not
imply sanity.
RMS deserves a lot of credit, for both the C
compiler, and the gnu public license, and
sticking to his guns and living according to
his ideas while the rest of the world
(including me) thought he was nuts.
I think I'm switching to the "Call it
GNU/Linux" camp, but I can understand if most
people feel that name changes are stupid, and
they'd rather stick with "Linux", just because
it's an already standardized name. (Though,
it is not true that names are meaningless,
arbitrary symbols, but let's leave that
argument for another day.)
But, the idea of re-writing all of the FSF
code just for the sake of spiting RMS, this
is a completely bug-nuts idea, far crazier
than anything I've ever heard from RMS.
I suggest sticking to the project of
re-writing Unix in perl. That's a pretty
beserk project too, but at least there's
some point to it.
I bet Tom Christiansen uses vi. That's
what the RMS wars are *really* about.
(I can't beleive I read all this drivel just
so I could post my own drivel with a clear
conscience...)
GNU/HURD == GNURD "g-nerd"
You can add GNU to almost anything. A little cuter anyway.
If what counts is who contributed the most, well that'd be the FSF, as the biggest _single_ contributer. But RMS isn't saying it should be named after the FSF. People use the GNU GPL as a contribution to the GNU OS (they could have just made their own). And the GNU GPL exists for the _GNU_ operating system. It has always been about the GNU OS.
If what counts is who contributed most, it certainly isn't Linus. Tom's little list tells is that. But the general public sure gets that impression by the name Linux.
If RMS were just egotistical, he would want it called RichX or RMSOS. I really don't see any part of his name in GNU, do you? But Linus has his name on 99% of what he did not write.
And what does BSD have to do with this anyway? Hey, did everyone who contributed to FreeBSD work for BSD or UC Berkeley? It's still called BSD.
Tom's logic is a little hard to follow.
I agree that the FSF has been selective about what is part of the GNU OS. And maybe they regret not jumping on the Linux kernel and waiting for HURD. I would regret it too.
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
--
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
HAL9000
10's of millions of users
Main-stream media coverage
It's too late now.
But I do like GNUX and GNURD!
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
--
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
HAL9000
I see a lot of comments of the theme "RMS is just whining 'cause he's not getting enough credit."
That may or may not be true, but it is really besides the point. There is a deeper reason for RMS trying for brand-name inclusion. He is scared to his bones that the ideal he has strived so hard and so long for will get sloughed off. From where I sit, that fear is valid.
Personally, I say "Linux" because everybody else does and it's easier to say. If somebody can come up with an ingenious new label which can match "linux" for simplicity and honour the myriad of contributors, I'll use it. But to be honest, I don't think it'll happen. Something like that has to be spontaneous, not calculated.
RMS' battle to include GNU in the brand name will not be won. But maybe there's another way to honour it's spirit.
Why do people assume that if the FSF didn't exist nothing else would have filled its place? I remember growing up in the PC world and there was plenty of "free" software and not a single person knew who the hell the FSF was.
Doesn't the FSF claim that one of the reasons software patents are bad is because of the high probability of independent discovery of ideas in the software field? Why do they think no one else would have come up with the free software idea if they hadn't?
"Linux" to me means the software that I use most. That is apache, vim, X11, ppp, lynx/netscape, xv, gimp, python, perl, and various compilers that have nothing to do with gcc. Which of those did the FSF write?
Why waste your time on political bullshit? Shut up and write some code that we _need_, not code so you can justify creating your own non-FSF distribution.
Ummm...why does the FSF waste their time on political bullshit? Tell them to "shut up and write code that we need", not code so they can justify creating their non-proprietary distribution.
Like the world really needed Yet Another TAR, or C compiler, or C debugger.
Bell Labs has done a lot for us all (or do you think Linux would exist if they hadn't come up with C and unix?), should we name it BellLinux?
Maybe we should rename it Locke/America or Smith/America. After all, why is the country named after some Spaniard? Don't those enlightenment philosopher types have an intellectual stake in equality and natural rights of men. And what about those economists and their capitalism?
why not acknowledge that most of the software is GPL'd and openly acknowledge other's contributions in the name?
Because the name isn't the right place to acknowledge contributions. Have you even gone to a movie named after the lead cinematographer? The only time you see director's names in titles is as marketing propaganda. Having GNU in your name is hardly good marketing.
Without gcc, where would we be?
Without an IDE driver for linux where would we be? Oh wait, that's right. When they discovered one didn't exist they just wrote it.
If gcc hadn't existed someone would have wrote a C compiler. Didn't/doesn't minix come with its own (non-gcc) compiler anyway?
But for our situation we only need one architecture for the target and one architecture for the host. I don't recall that Linus was cross compiling linux to Alphas on Day 1. It doesn't have to be optimal for what we are talking about here either. Linus was writing something for fun to learn about x86s (IIRC). Why would be need an optimal compiler for that?
But for our situation we only need one architecture for the target and one architecture for the host. I don't recall that Linus was cross compiling linux to Alphas on Day 1. It doesn't have to be optimal for what we are talking about here either. Linus was writing something for fun to learn about x86s (IIRC). Why would he need an optimal compiler for that?
My bad :-). If I had remembered Amerigo's last name I probably would have clued into his being Italian.
10% is infact FSF,
and thats the biggest contribution, isnt it?
Besides, one must judge contribution not just by sourcecode lines,
but rather on what it does.
the most important part of the os, is infact the linux kernel,
but there are many other important parts, such as bash or X or GNOME (for me anyway).
Not only that but there are many important useful GNU utilities that may not be important if
you wish to run linux, but are when you want to do things with it, such as gcc, make, tar, gzip, many others.
When I use linux (for home use, anyway) i use mostly GNU software, and i compile them with gnu software, so if I want to judge my linux by usage I'll have to call it GNU/Linux.
The point is, imho, not that linux is a product of GNU, but that it is not ONLY made by Linus,
as many people tend to think.
These people regard OS as everything they get on their RedHat CD, just like in Windows you get
the kernel, window manager, and file exploder.
This is wrong, and I'd prefer the name "many anonymous contributors' UNIX" rather than linux myself, but its just too long.
Also, you may be correct to say that GPLed software is not a part of FSF,
but it was inspired by it, and thus FSF deserves some [tiny] credit also for "ideaology".
If Linus named Linux differently I'd agree with you,
but the name Linux is confusing,
and one may assume that Linus coded every part of it by himself.
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
I think that even if the FSF is "credited" for 100% of it, GNU/Linux just plain SOUNDS STUPID. Seriously. Just another thing Linux has going for it -- a cool name. Don't wreck it.
Just in case though, an enterprising person might go register gnulinux.com
It seems that snatching and selling domains is en vogue this season......
Yea, we know, FreeBSD is the answer to everything. I've been told this many times before. It seems that freebsd users simply want people to not use linux. I've used FreeBSD, and I chose to stay with linux for whatever reason, lets just say its because "linux" has less characters so that I dont start a war.I dont go around saying "FreeBSD sucks, use Linux" and I rarely hear Linux users doing so, why can't FreeBSD users stop nagging us? Some people use Macs, some people use Windows, everyone has a personality, everyone is different and has different tastes. Why cant we just accept that and stop bitching at everyone.
OK, so without GCC & the rest of the GNU tools we probably wouldn't have Linux.
Just because I use somebodys compiler to develop a product I'm not going to stick their name in front of the product I write and compile using their compiler.
In other words I'm not going to name my house after the name of the drill I use to put a few shelves up, or the manufacturer of the cement mixer I used to make my patio.
..and so I'm certainly not going to use the term GNU/Linux!
P.S. Just in case anyone wonders, I think GCC and the rest of their tools are very nice, do a wonderful job and I would like to thank anyone who has assisted on them for their efforts.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
That Torvalds guy comes in at #726 in the Suse count, at 0.012%. That ought to give rms 100 times the bragging rights!
You all realize, of course, that the Politically Correct way out of this is some meaningless acronym for our OS?
Please. This "Feature" hardly rises above the level of a flame. How about a TC-free distro (no perl I guess).
-- THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK -- --
Linux is about software quality, people, not politics. We can't lose sight of that.
-- Brian Trammell
I call it Linux b/c Linus started it... GNU/Linux is OK b/c GNU started a lot of it, too... but that's not what I call it. Call it what you want. I'll call it what I want.
We're both talking about the same thing.
OK?
Linux is a kernel, not a OS. What makes the OS is the kernel, the compilers, the utilities and the applications. That's why we should call it Gnu/Linux. Gnu compiler + Linux kernel. Change it to BSD - don't matter - it then should be named BSD/Linux. (Argh) :-) )
When Gnu releases the Hurd, it will not be called "The GNU Os", it will be called Gnu/Hurd. And also, it is just the name. It doesnt matter. If an apple was called gnapple it would continue to be an apple (a cheaper apple, of course
Also, Gnu software are fisically 10% of the distro, but are the most used. Disk space is nothing, it does say nothing. I can have 100 programs from lalalasoft in my distro and not use them. But sure that the most useful software on the distro are GNU - who don't use gcc, binutils, textutils, bash, sh-utils, and even ls?
Since the 80's Gnu was supporting and making the free compiler and utilities, and RMS was the first that believed on free software. Was not him, Gnu/Linux would not exist today neither those bunch of free software.
Why? Because Linux (the kernel) depends on the compiler. And the OS depends on the compiler and on the utilities (binutils, fileutils, etc.). Linus Torvalds would not be motivated to grow his Minix into Linux if he had not found Gnu and joint with them.
Also, Gnu/Linux quality depends a lot on the compiler quality, and we all know that gcc is the best free compiler. (And also better than most of the non-free).
So, what's the problem with GNU? They are not charging anyone for the software. They make little money from the donations and investing it all back again on free software. FSF and RMS are good. They mean no harm to free software. No harm at all. They just add to it and makes it greater. They do not control their programmers neither their software. It is all written in the GPL. If it was a evil license, Linux and the other 80% linux software would not be GPL.
You should fight against Red Hat! They are the evil ones. They are trying to monopolize free software hiring all good FS programmers and to make their pack manager the "default" for free software. They are selling the free software and making a lot of profit on work from GNU People and Linux People and other FS programmers that are not being paid. Red$at Capitalists! Die in pain!
--------------
Well, sorry about the grammar - I from Brasil andy dunot spike inglish
--
"Basically the message is: Steal It!
You cannot have a Linux OS without a Linux kernel but you can have one Gnu/Hurd OS with Hurd kernel.
The compiler is the main part of an OS, not the kernel. Without the compiler you cannot run on your machine. Well, you may say that you get the binaries direct from RedShit Distribution, but anyway, there would be no binaries without the compiler. There would be lines and lines of code doing nothing.
Any other C compile that you would use would be one of these things:
1) not free
2) not open-source
3) not as good as gcc
So, remove GNU from Linux and you get an empty box. Maybe Windows is better than Linux w/o GNU.
--
"Basically the message is: Steal It!
This was a big argument in #linux yesterday, for which a bunch of people got kicked in the typical childish IRC manner.
It would seem to me that Linus could have called it "KerSplat!Nix" for all he cares, being the perpetrator of this wonderful os!
Get over the petty semantics and focus on more important things like making it desktop-friendly and easy to install without having to be a programmer!
bnf
this space intentionally left blank (oops)
Oh-oh...
This is one of two things:
1. You are a Troll. In that case you are a fairly weak troll for I am the only one responding to this message. And also you should not say things like "I do not care what you say" in a troll message cause you will lose audience. Anyway you are a weak, stupid, senseless and ignorant troll.
2. You are serious. In that case you are trying to make a point by being rude, which is ridiculous, because, for example, me, after reading this message of yours, doesn't want to read either your more.html or TC's or RMS's articles to find out if you are right or wrong, because I am offended badly enough as it is. So, you do not generate any sane conversation or make a valuable argument in any case.
Summary:
You are a lousy stupid bastard/bitch ( see case #2)
or you are a fcsking troll and therefore a moron ( see case #1 ).
So, just shut the FCSK up!
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
You condem Tom for political bullshit, why not condem the FSF for revisionism in trying to claim credit for the work of others.
There is a difference between saying "FSF/Linux" and "GNU/Linux." What Tom has done with his numbers is essentially to discount GNU contributions of people who did not write their code as FSF employees. Tom even goes so far as to claim that egcs, a compiler project where the contributor are actually assigning their copyrights to FSF still does not qualify as a "GNU project." A few years ago, I released some numbers indicating that counting GNU software as the software on the GNU FTP site (and that is not all of the GNU software really, but, then again, Perl is also on their FTP site), this software constituted that largest contribution to Plug and Play Linux, larger than the X Consortium (including Sun, DEc, etc. in that block), and larger than BSD, and over eleven times larger than Linux (kernel + some linux-specific stuff).
While it is difficult to document, it is also generally acknowledged that FSF people and the example of the GNU project were important factors in the decisions to make BSD and the X Window System free. Without FSF, it is likely that the state of free software on unix-like platforms would be about the same as it is on Microsoft Windows.
No one should publish such hateful, harmful, ill-informed articles. Tom Christiansen is one of the less reasonable persons I ever met, and publishing such bad words does only harm to the cause of freedom and (or) good software.
I do not think CmdrTaco can reasonably justify having published this.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
The FSF lives to support the "freedom in software" idea, so every ad for GNU or FSF is evangelizing for freedom.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Obviously that is the truth of the particular moment when and distribution about which RMS was talking.
He was never a liar.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
1. FSF started this whole thing.
2. FSF tools are essential to the system, less so than the kernel but there's more code in FSF tools than in kernel, FSF probably deserves as much credit as Linus.
3. RMS is trying to keep the concept of free software alive. GNU/Linux may sound silly, but does RMS really think the name will be changed? I don't think so, most likely he just tries to remind everybody about the concept that lays in the foundation.
4. Before attacking RMS like this, he should probably write as much essential linux system code as RMS.
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
The thing that I believe the writer of the article forgets is that GNU in GNU/Linux means that it is a GNU tool, i.e.GPLed, not necessarily contributed solely by the Free Software Foundation. I'd say that the large majority of that Unrecognized code is GPLed as is a lot of the other stuff. Anyway, 10% is the largest portion by any entity. Linus himself only contributed .012 percent according to the link. I think this guy is too quick to shoot his mouth off (or kickban good guys from #perl :) without thinking.
-- atomly
right, but even if most of the users-space tools *were* from GNU, that *still* wouldn't make it GNU/Linux.
Look at Microsoft Windows: most of the applets that ship with Windows, for instance, are not written by Microsoft at all. The Defrag utility is written by Symantec. Wordpad, Solitaire, Calculator, and many other tools are actually written by ISVs and supplied to Microsoft under license. Even Internet Exploder is based on Mosaic, and as such isn't 100% Microsoft code by any measure.
The OS is truly the kernel...Windows' kernel is written by MS, and Linux's kernel is written by Linus and all the Linux contributors.
My journal has hot
Besides, do we really want to call it Unrecognized/Linux?
I still fail to see what is wrong with just calling it "Linux". No other Operating Systems (or pieces of software) are named based upon who's contributed to it. The presedent for this isn't very similar, ie. we do call "windows" "microsoft windows" fairly frequently (atleast people I know do) but in our case, what company name do we have to tack onto Linux, attaching GNU to it isn't quite the same. I do believe the GNU project does deserve reccognition. I appriate all they've done for the software world. I don't believe "GNU/Linux" is the correct way to give that reccognition.
I think the MIT AI Lab is a good place to look =)
how is this different than BSD?
-n
Fine, so spell it Li'nux. The 'g' is missing
and silent. And drop the apostrophe too.
As for RMS's bitching, how much of gcc and the
other FSF utilities (not counting Emacs, which is a waste of disk space as far as I'm concerned) did he actually right, vs all the other uncredited authors of FSF code? Didn't a founder of Cygnus do about half-a-dozen ports of gcc himself?
I've heard it said "it's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit", and there's a lot of truth to that. What has RMS/FSF accomplished in the time they've been whining about credit?
If you wanted credit, it should have been a requirement in the GPL. Sheesh.
-- Alastair
"Free bee ess dee".
"Lin ux".
Nah, FreeBSD just has too many syllables. Unless you want to pronounce it "freebased".
-- Alastair
absadamnlutley!
who cares?
scoundrels accusing cads...
When I first started programming, the equipment I had access to was a bunch of Datapoint minis (you know Datapoint - the people who invented ARCnet - they were actually pretty innovative for their day - back in the 70s they had networked micros, only they never realized what they had and never escaped the proprietary mindset. Ted Nelson (Xanadu, "hypertext", etc.) worked for them for a while). Anyway, the Datapoint OS was called "RMS" ("Resource Management System"). Probably still hold the trademark too. Datapoint nowadays (at least till very recently) branched into video equipment and makes such money as they make mostly through patent infringment litigation. So, I might stay away from "RMS". Bad vibes.
So, the statistic used is the size of the packages in bytes. Is this reasonable? Are there some things which are large, easier to program, less essential? Also, are there things which are more central to the development? Instances of the latter might be gcc or emacs.
More interestingly why does everyone care so much? The explanation offered by Christiansen is that it is disrespectful of the FSF to minimize the contributions of the many who have contributed. I can accept that as a legitimate reason. But is that why everyone is keen on it? It is serendipitous for the "Open Source" zealots and ideologues that this attack should come at a time when they are attempting to leverage their way into the business world.
That, at least, would make sense
RMS is going against the entire spirit of free software. The ONLY thing that matters in OSS is giving your code away for the greater good of mankind. By trying to claim credit, politically or socially, and for money or for fame, he is destroying the entire spirit of the OSS community. I used to look up to him, but now I just look up to Linus.
Look, realistically, Linux will continue to be called Linux by the users, even if the name were officially changed to GNU/Linux, because we all tend to shorten unnecessary verbiage. (Y2K?)
I call my computer an operating system an "OS", microsoft "MS", or "M$", or whatever I want to because they can't force me to call it something else. Same with Linux -- Linus called it Linux, and Linux is catchy, punny, etc. Get over it RMS... practice what you preach.
I'm not arguing that it *should* be called GNU/Linux. Hell, I don't care what it's called (just don't call me late...never mind). But a new GNU-free distribution is just stupid. At a time when the Free/Open/Whatever community needs to work together more, a move towards fragmentation serves nobody's interests. Not Tom's, not the FSF's, and especially not the end user.
Let the FSF holler all they want. If distributors agree, they'll call it GNU/Linux. If they don't (and most of them don't seem to agree with the FSF), they'll call it whatever the heck they want.
By the way, to get the FSF's viewpoint, read Linux and the GNU Project on the GNU website.
RMS isn't a lunatic. Eccentric, yes. Very. But behind every revolution there's an eccentric. By being so leftist, he pulls those leaning to the right back towards the middle. Like RMS or not, he serves an important purpose, and has been a major (positive) influence on what Linux is today.
And let me reiterate my earlier position: a GNU-Free distribution serves nobody. Reinventing a *massive* codebase (despite what TC will have you believe) is wheel-spinning. Putting out Yet Another Distribution is wheel-spinning, and further fragments the Free/Open/Linux community. And by encouraging these divisions, TC is essentially fragmenting the same community that RMS has been helping to create. So who's the real lunatic here?
> So what? Being dependent on one code base is
> bad. Choice is good. Just because something is
> GPL-ed, or has an FSF stamp on it doesn't mean
> other alternatives can't be better (for
> whatever value of better you prefer; what's
> better for one can mean worse for someone else).
Improving the codebase for the sake of improvement is a good thing. If you want to write a better compiler than gcc, then that advances the state of the technology (=good). But if you're writing a compiler for the *sole* purpose of not using gcc, then you're wheel-spinning (=bad). You are wasting a tremendous amount of resources that could have been better spent advancing the state of the technology.
I don't advocate that GNU/GPL tools are the best. In some cases they're not the best. Perl is a prime example. But I'd be crazy to set out and create a GPL version of Perl, for the sole purpose of avoiding Artistic License. That's really what we're talking about.
RMS's point about changing the name is not that he's trying to brainwash his fellow coders/hackerz into repeating "GNU...GNU..." like a mantra. His point is that the 99.5% of the world who don't read /. don't understand that without the contributions of the FSF, none of this would matter. Of course, Linus' kernel was the key that created "Linux", but without the GNU software, you don't have an OS either.
I think he's unlikely to manage a name change at this stage of the game. The masses & the media call the entire system (wrongly) "Linux" and that's pretty much the way it'll stay. Thank you Mr. Stallman, and keep up the fight for freedom, but "Linux" is what everyone but the cognoscienti is going to call the whole ball of wax.
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
Yes, I think that RMS is a little off-base with his "GNU/Linux" crusade, if only because ruthless self-promotion leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But let's not forget that RMS has written MANY more lines of code than Tom, and has been far more active as an advocate of free software. And even if current Linux distributions may only have 10% (or whatever) FSF-written packages, the fact remains that Linux would not be the OS it is today if it weren't for GCC and other free, open tools. Even if everyone changed to egcs tomorrow, that wouldn't change the fact that the GNU tools have made a LOT of quality software possible over the past few years. Give credit to those whose shoulders you stand upon.
We all (including, I imagine, RMS himself) know that RMS can be a bit bull-headed in his fanaticism at times, but what some call stubbornness, others might call integrity - one of the things that I genuinely admire about RMS is that he consistently sticks to his guns, even when it totally flies in the face of social convention. I may not agree with everything he says, but I have a lot of respect for his motivations and ethics.
RMS may be a little headstrong (in my opinion) regarding the GNU/Linux issue, but so what? If it bothers me that much, I've still got the source code and can edit the offending terminology out of /etc/motd. Tom's proposal to castrate the GNU bits out of Linux, on the other hand, reminds me of nothing so much as a tempermental third grader on the schoolyard, rallying his classmates with taunts that "Richie's a dork! Let's nobody play with HIS stupid toys!" This does not demonstrate the cooperative spirit that, to me, is the real foundation of the free software movement. Not to mention that doing away with *all* GNU code based on the opinions of one person is a slap in the face to a *LOT* of people who have put a lot of time and effort into furthering the cause of free software. (And remember folks, the GIMP, Windowmaker, etc. are all part of the GNU bannerhead and therefore PROHIBITED by the DARK COMMANDMENT of DEMON PENGUIN).
Please consider that sometimes it is genuinely beneficial to overlook the quirks in people's personalities in order to concentrate on their actual efforts. It shows maturity, and in the long run, in most cases, people's personalities don't matter as much as what the person has actually DONE.
-hh
(BTW, I've informally started referring to my distro of choice as "Debian/GNU Linux"... gives credit to the FSF contributions and just seems more aesthetically satifying... :D)
"...the seats and sound system make it nice"!?! I thought we were talking about cars, not living rooms. Point being that many of us do in fact get passionate about the lower-level technical stuff (powertrain, OS).
Who cares indeed.
Come on, this is just a stab at RMS. If people want to call it GNU/Linux then let them. Screw that, it's not a matter of letting them or not, it's the way it is and is going to continue to be. If you're really serious about replacing all the gnu code then I wish you luck, competition is good for everybody. I'd be particularly interested in seeing your emacs, gcc, and gdb replacments. To my knowledge their isn't a compiler of similar capability for linux that isn't based on gcc.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
CS graduates write compilers that spit out highly sub-optimal code for one architecture, hosted on one architecture. Mine was a pascal-like language on SGI/MIPS.
gcc, on the other hand, supports every architecture under the sun. gcc also compiles and runs on every architecture under the sun. Finally, it optimizes on all of those architectures, in most cases only slightly worst than the best compilers out there.
My point is, gcc is not just any compiler -- it is the best compiler!
CS graduates write compilers that spit out highly sub-optimal code for one architecture, hosted on one architecture. Mine was a pascal-like language on SGI/MIPS.
gcc, on the other hand, supports every architecture under the sun. gcc also compiles and runs on every architecture under the sun. Finally, it optimizes on all of those architectures, in most cases only slightly worst than the best compilers out there.
My point is, gcc is not just any compiler. Anyone with any doubts as to RMS's programming ability should look at gcc, imho the best piece of free software ever written, imho (although a bit too lispy for my taste).
Okay. Here, to the best of my understanding, is a history of GNU.
:)
A long time ago, Richard Stallman was a student at MIT. At that time, all software was free and open, and RMS really dug that. Then he ran across some proprietary software, and it pissed him off that it was proprietary.
It really pissed him off.
It REALLY REALLY pissed him off.
So much so that he dedicated his life to replacing all proprietary software with free alternative versions.
He decided that Unix was a pretty popular thing, so he sat down to make a free version of Unix. He called it GNU, recursively meaning "GNU's Not Unix," because it wasn't Unix, it was a free clone of Unix. (Unix was owned by AT&T. Currently, as a bit of trivia, the name "Unix" is owned by SCO.)
So GNU was supposed to be a full-fledged free Unix clone. That was the idea. RMS and company started making a lot of software, leaving the kernel until last for some reason. All the other GNU OS components were pretty cool, such as EMACS and GCC and such. So people would use them in proprietary versions of Unix. But still RMS's dream was to make a free system, GNU.
Then Linus Torvalds, in 91, decides to fuck around with making a kernel based on Andy Tanenbaum's MINIX. Because, hey, don't we all want to make our own kernel.
So he makes his own kernel which he calls "Linux." People convince him to make it as compatible as possible with the GNU utilities, and to license it under the GNU license.
Keep in mind that at this point, GNU (RMS's free Unix clone) is almost done except for a kernel. Linux is released, and bam, fills in the missing link.
So from RMS's point of view, it's as if this decades-long project -- his life's work, really -- was taken away from him at the last second. This work of his, GNU, this free version of Unix he had planned out, was being called Linux by everyone because that was the kernel it was based on.
This, it should be noted, is hilarious. The whole idea of free software is that it isn't owned by anyone. In such a system, it is necessarily difficult to give credit where credit is due. So RMS is mad at his own creation -- unownable software.
Linus Torvalds, as far as I can tell, could not care less about who gets the credit, or what the damn thing is named, or whether all proprietary software is killed or not. He mostly seems to care about seeing that his family is well-cared for and that he has a stimulating job.
www.fsf.org for more info.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
So are you going to want to call it BSD/Linux? :-)
Unless someone could suggest reasonable technical reasons why this is a good idea and not just `political' ones it seems like a waste of time to me. I don't call it GNU/Linux (if only to save saying one syllable), but if other people want to, who cares?
I think Tom raises good points in this article. GNU is co-opting Linux. (Anyone remember the nice little "Ignore Linux, think Hurd" moniker?
After all, 90% of all perl dists are compiled via GCC, does that mean that Perl should now be "GNU/perl?"
It does indeed come down to the free beer vs. Free speach issue.
BTW, is there a good moving BSD linux project yet? I like BSD, but am getting really tired of the splits in the BSD groups.
Gee, do you think that this diatribe might have something to do with the fact that Tom's ridiculous effort to rewrite the GNU suite in Perl is failing to attract much of a following?
Nothing like starting a flame war with bogus numbers to get some attention, eh?
Tom is one of the primary reasons I have switched to Python (though the excellence of that language is why I have not switched back). The Python cognoscente are actually decent people.
Information is not Knowledge
RMS cannot force us to call Linux what he wants rather than what we want, and Christianson cannot write a Perl Unix all by himself. Let's just ignore them both and be about our business.
Information is not Knowledge
Right. Says one thing, clearly means something else. Disingenuous.
Information is not Knowledge
Surely with Tom's pathetic arguement this means it should be called "The Uncredited OS".
Stick to Perl Tom. Politics is best left to those who do it well.
Richard Stallman has every right to want his team to get some credit. Its not like their in this for the money. (Unlike some...)
Phill
The OS is not the kernel. Or should Mac OS X, Digital UNIX (Sorry, Compaq TRU64) both be called Mach now?
Phill
Tom is one of the primary reasons I have switched to Python
Silly me, I choose a language based on its suitablilty to get the job done. D'oh, I should be basing my choice on the personality of my creators. Another lesson learned from
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Anyone know of a Web site with a piccy of the Demon Penguin? I'd kinda like to see what it looks like :-) Tux with a trident, I guess.
>"Linux" to me means the software that I use most.
That is indeed RMS' point: the name "Linux" is terribly misused. That in turn hurts, amongst others, FSF -- which is why the GNU/Linux war started in the first place.
Sphincter person has a point here. This is just a war of egos, where the dominating rms ego (admittedly very annoying) is being challenged by tc. Linus was right - Linux is just a "cool name". Let's use it.
without the foundation that the fsf laid, linux would have been much less likely to evolve to what it is today. could all the fsf stuff be replaced - certainly, but could the influence, the empowerment, be ignored. i do not think so. if tommorrow microsoft wrote there own implementation of the traditional unix stuff, so a distribution could be 75% ms, would ms/linux be appropriate. no. it isn't about percent. it is about spirit and legacy. it is, and always should be, gnu/linux - ie. one implementation of the vision that we should all thank rms for having.
My blog
Then does Linus? I mean, look at the numbers Tom posted -- the FSF contributed more code than any other named person. Certainly more than Linus. So maybe we shouldn't call it Linux, either. I propose that it be renamed HASH (Highly Accessible System HASH) to reflect the sheer number of contributors.
Which is, of course, a stupid argument. But that's the argument Tom's using -- that the mere percentage of code contributed should determine the name. That's pretty specious. Thanks, Tom, for introducing spurious logic into the matter... pretty soon we can be just like Usenet!
Here's the real question -- could Linux have reached critical mass without the GNU utilities? Sure, there's a lot more there now. But look back to the old pre 1.0 days, and ask yourself how much of the Linux code was from the FSF then? I don't think Linux would have happened if Linus had needed to write all the FSF utils from scratch. And in the end, that's what really matters.
The fact that Tom went so far as to use the word, "hypocritical," is precisely why this is news. Finally, a prominent contributer in the open source community has the balls to call RMS what he is.
The FSF gave us the GPL. Perhaps now they should read it.
I'm seeing some parallels here....
One thing is to write a compiler... Another thing (and a very different one) is to write a half-decent compiler. An almost impossible task is to write an EXCELLENT compiler.
> Should everything compiled with
;)
>GCC and debugged with GDB be referred to with the
>'GNU/' prefix? Maybe everything anyone has ever
>viewed on paper should be referred to with a
>'Gutenberg/' prefix.
Well... So printed Linux manuals could be abreviated as "GNUtemberg/"? Sounds neat
Try with LiGNUx... Well, it's a bit harder to pronounce than it is to spell...
Well... If we want to give credit where credit is due to great contributions, maybe I should state I'm working on a Babbage/Eniac/Univac/Multics/Unix/Linux machine, and that most PC users use a Babbage/Eniac/Univac/Multics/Unix/CP\/M/DOS/Window s machine? (I don't know the exact order and derivation of systems, but this can get ridiculous...)
That is the point. Stallman is one of the most influential guys in this movement. He is one of the main coders - And we all know that gcc is his work. Now, if it were scc (stallman C compiler), it would still stick. The thing is, his name will be inscribed in any and all of the FSF utilities, as well as the HURD kernel. NOT in any currently available OS. And, as you say - ESR got famous thanks to the Cathedral and the Bazaar. RMS got famous thanks to the GPL - one of the finest works we live with.
Well, I was not logged in, sorry. I don't want to be an anonymous coward, just a stupid0 poster !
I'm GDON from France.
gdon
Why do revolutions always inspire counter-revolutions in which the leaders of the previous revolution are immediately placed against a wall and shot?
Nobody can force you into calling it GNU/Linux or Linux. No clause in the GPL asks for a "GNU" label. So calling the thing GNU/Linux (or anything else) depends on the people. If you don't like it, just refuse to do so.
On the other hand, it would be a stupid move to start rewriting things just because somebody asks you to call it something else (and without much chance in succeeding). The energy of free software comes from its users: the more people using it, the stronger it is. To rewrite things means to break up the user base into two camps, the FSF camp and the non-FSF camp. Now the number of testers for each camp is halved, the efforts needed to add more features is doubled, and so proprietary software companies have twice or more chance to divide and conquer them.
If you don't like it to be called GNU/Linux, just ignore RMS. Don't rebel in such a way which makes everybody lose.
The man says what we've known all along, but never took the time to prove.
Perhaps now we can do away with the travesty of "gnulix" as well.
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
Don't give credit to anyone in the title. Just give it a name that reflects the idiotic infighting by you retards.
ANother Unix System (ANUS)
-Beat em like a rented mule-
Firewater
I was cursing while you tried to pray to an idol with feet of clay. -firewater
Get a life Todd. By splitting the code base you're hurting Linux's hard-won position. If Uncle Billy wanted to screw up Linux, he could do no better than to hire someone to do exactly what you're doing.
If you don't like the phrase GNU/Linux, just call it Linux like 90% of the population. Slander Stallman all you want. Flame me. Just don't sabotage Linux -- we've all worked too hard to get it where it is.
Steve Litt
slitt@troubleshooters.com
It doesn't change the message -- don't mess with Linux
Steve Litt
slitt@troubleshooters.com
Well... The ms/Linux part is quite interesting :)
If Microsoft did a distro based on Linux (And they could do it if they wanted to) I think it would be called MS/Linux.
But the points of all this (as I see it) is:
The name used for the OS is Linux... Nothing more and nothing less.
The name of the bundle (distro) is made up of the distromaker and Linux. Example: [Long] Red Hat Linux, [short] RH/Linux.
Now, if only FSF did a distro of Linux I would gladly call it GNU/Linux (or FSF/Linux if they wanted me too).
The GPL is an important part of Linux, yes, but not THE most important part... Without the cooperation and devotion of hundreds of user/developers Linux wouldn't exist, period.
//Patrik Graeser
Agreed! I've called it Linux since 92 (that was when I started installed Linux on my PC), and everyone was happy and called it Linux as the OS grown to what it is today. So why all the fuss about whether to call it Linux or GNU/Linux now ?
It seems that politics play as big of a role in the open source movemement as in the corporate world. There are a lot of people contributing to the open source world, and have been contributing for years. The press has jumped on Linux and made it and Linus the poster child for the movement, this has obviously effected other people's egos.
I have been using open source code for years and I am thankful to all including the FSF for their efforts. I could almost agree with the Copyleft, but feel much more comfortable with a Berkely copyright. If the press would just focus on Open Source Code and give recognition to all open source efforts it would help. I have used/supported many of these tools, I even used Linux before BSD became free, and I'm sure I will
switch back to it when the 2.2 kernel is out on CD rom just to check it out again. I just don't feel that there is legitimate reason to call it GNU/Linux. The FSF deserves recognition but this
reminds me of what I find wrong with the copyleft,
and that is that the FSF is infringing on other peoples freedom to decide how they want to release their code. There are more ways to be free than just the copyleft!!!
This is such a waste... True, FSF owns very little of the software, and most
people don't call it GNU/Linux, but so what if some people do? Is that a
reason not to use perfectly good, well-developed, well-tested, free
software? I've found GNU's software to be some of the best. I take
everything Stallman says with a grain of salt, but he's an awesome hacker
with a lot of motivation. I proudly run GNU software on my system. I don't
have to; I could walk into the other room and run that copy of Watcom C++ I
paid a bunch of $$$ for on a Windows machine. But gcc is just as good, if
not better. Stallman can gripe about Linux's name all he wants, and he's
welcome to call it GNU/Linux if that pleases him. It doesn't mean anyone
else has to.
This is such a superficial issue. These people are taking much-needed
resources away from progress in their attempt to rewrite the wheel over a
brand name dispute...
-Reeves
-- Linux. Because blue screens are for video editing.
Linux, Perl, GNU tools, and all the other goodies we enjoy are free. But even better, they're great tools. I don't actually mind paying for MS products as much as I mind putting up with the endless, senseless bugs. Good Enough is not. For now, it looks like the bazaar is making headway against the bizarre (and broken, code and applications.) But then the Marxists jump in. No offense intended to RMS, but his words leave me with the impression that he's more interested in getting glory than in getting free/open-source/whatever-you-call-it programs. I would like to know more about the scores of individual contributors who made all this possible, and I'm glad Tom shed some light on the subject.
> The real question is -- why change the name when it already had a name?
I agree completely. What you seem to be forgetting is that the original name was GNU. Linus and company created a kernel before the Hurd was finished. Counting all the software bundled with the operating system as part of the OS is a bit odd, and GNU refers only to the OS.
Jon Peterson wrote:
> It's probably fair to say that if the FSF had never written a line of code, Linux would not exist, whereas if one of the other contributers (except Linus, obviously) had not written their code, someone else would have filled their place.
That's silly. The FSF isn't the only initiative to write free software. If there hadn't been GNU tools, Linus might have used BSD based tools. Some other group of people would have written a C compiler.
It's absurd to assume free/open tools wouldn't be available if there wasn't FSF/GNU.
-- Abigail
rlk wrote:
/bin, /usr/bin, libc and such.
/bin and /usr/bin are filled with trivial programs. Not all of them, but most of them.
> And I suspect that if one looks at the core --
While I'll grant you that libc is a major effort, one should realize that
-- Abigail
AC wrote:
> Shut up and write some code that we _need_,
Why the fuck should Tom write some code *you* need? Write your own code. Come back by the time your contribution to the software community is as large as Tom's.
-- Abigail
MoxCamel wrote:
> Reinventing a *massive* codebase is wheel-spinning.
So what? Being dependent on one code base is bad.
Choice is good. Just because something is GPL-ed, or has an FSF stamp on it doesn't mean other alternatives can't be better (for whatever value of better you prefer; what's better for one can mean worse for someone else).
-- Abigail
Pac wrote:
> The fact that someone else out of sheer luck could have decided to develop what was needed in the absence of FSF can not be used to dimish their role.
I am not dimishing their role. However, to follow your analogy, physics wouldn't have stopped advancing if Newton had died as a toddler.
-- Abigail
I'm not demanding an FSF-free Linux.
I don't even use Linux....
-- Abigail
You go and write a working kernel from scratch sometimes.
Even if you succeed in 5 years, Linus already did. How long has FSF been working on their kernel?
-- Abigail
Just what exactly is he counting? All of SuSE, with every package available, or just a "base" system? I would guess that a base system (consisting of shell, editor, utilities, compiler, maybe even X11) would have a much higher percentage of FSF software. The rest of the packages are optional applications, not OS. Not to mention that, by his count, the OS shouldn't be called "Linux" either, since Linus obviously had little to do with it.
Suggest Massa Gates is up at the BIG HOUSE
giggling whilst one of his girly boys read
him this article an all the comments it
generates. Look up the word and see if
it don't fit.
j.
Nope. They rely on a compiler. That is currently gcc.
GNU/FSF doesn't have a monopoly on the name just because their stuff is used.
Part of Free Software is not re-creating what already exists.
No one has seen a need to replace gcc. So they haven't.
GNU provides the compiler that they use (at the moment). But the system is BSD.
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men"
Why duplicate effort? Isn't that one of the things open software is supposed to eliminate?
Why fight yet another religous war?
Who cares if RMS wants to rant about a name?
free speech means that you are free to speak (if you so choose). it most definately does not mean that your speech is free (whether you like it or not).
now i've forgotten how i was going to explain that. oh well.