There's a lot of people in the Free Software community who want to abolish patents entirely. Although I understand and agree with their sentiments, I don't think it has to go this far. Some very simple, basic reforms would eliminate 95% of the problems. The other 5% we can live with.
The way patents work (in the US at least) is that a patent is filed, a non-expert lawyer in the patent office grants it, and it's then up to third parties to bring it to court to repeal it. It's backwards!
Granting patents to software is not bad in and of itself. But what makes it so onerous is that most of the software patents being granted are silly. In regards to traditional (non-software) inventions, one can patent a new type of mousetrap, but one is not allowed to patent mousetraps per se.
The basic criteria of patents used to "novel and unintuitive to an expert in the field". Furthermore, it must be no prior use. The US Patent Office employs zero experts in the software field. They are unqualified to determine if an algorithm is novel or unintuitive. They are also incapable of determining if an algorithm has been used before.
There are two simple reforms that I think would make a big difference. First of all, the filers should demonstrate that the algorithm is novel and unintuitive, and it not prior art. During the patent process they would have to submit reports from experts saying so, and others in the industry could do this as well, for or against. I know that proving a negative is impossible, but one can still provide evidence of it. Second, the algorithm must be described in detail so that it is distinguishable from all other algorithms. It is the algorithm that is being patented, not the results. This would eliminate patents on "a method to locate data across a network" (mousetraps in general), and instead the patent would have to be "a method to route search requests using a xxx protocal over a yyy network which is 33% faster than the zzz method" (a specific mousetrap).
The exact details would have to be hashed out by the lawyers, of course. But the stupid process of file, grant and only then challenge must stop.
Helsinki News Service: "Man yells fire in crowded theatre, dozens trampled. Government responds by banning use of word 'fire'."
Seriously, my first introduction to virus protections came at a PCUG meeting. The speaker was explaining how to protect yourself against virii. He proceeded to write a virus in ten lines of DOS batch file code. Then he tried to infect the demo computer with it. It failed of course, but seeing exactly how a virus worked was very helpful.
Question is, what possibly criminal act was he committing?
Why should the courts/governments/police get involved? Cause it's fraud. Just because no one is out money doesn't mean they're not harmed. Imagine...
You call your dear mother long distance with one of those new-fangled prepaid thingies. However, instead of your mother answering, it's Debbie in Duluth making a living as a phone-whore. Good thing you didn't have it on speaker phone!
Or, your online TV guide lists "Dumbo" showing at 7:00. It's a great movie for kids, so you let your six year old watch it. At 6:59 you go to the back yard to do yard work. At 7:40 you return to find out that your previously innocent child has been watching hardcore porn for the best part of an hour because someone jacked the online TV listings.
Or, you walk into a building that house "First National Bank" above the door. It's a large marble building like banks should be. But once inside it turns out to be a Mustang Ranch franchise. Desperate to uphold your reputation in the community you turn to leave only to find that the door doesn't have a handle on this side.
One comment was here about just slapping the GPL on the Corel distro. Previous topics had posts mentioning that "Redhat is 100% GPL", "Debian is a GPL'd distro", etc.
Sorry folks, you can't license a distro under the GPL. It's not possible unless each and every line of code within each and every package is GPL, the new BSD or X. This is simply not the case in any distro, and probably never will be. You can't replace someone else's license with your own.
What a distro CAN do is to license their own code, scripts, etc., under the GPL. But this still requires absolutely no modifications to any (old) BSD, MPL, QPL, or Artistic code. I am aware of no distribution that does this. Yeah, it would be nice if every piece of software in the world were GPL, and it would also be nice if every single person in the world belonged to my political party and voted for my candidates solely, but this is the real world and we have to live in it.
For the past three days Slashdot has been an arena of amateur legalists arguing over what the GPL means (ignoring all other licenses in their religious fervor). Since a system of laws based upon uninformed personal opinion is highly dangerous, I think it's time for the courts to step in.
Let the GPL see the inside of a courtroom for once. Let the experts hash it out. The FSF needs to challenge Corel legally. Then we can find out if the GPL means what it says or means whatever people want it to mean at the moment.
Issues to hash out:
1) What does "distribute" mean. Can two friends share GPL code amongst themselves without running afoul of the slashdotters? Can Bill Gates share his private version of emacs with Steve Ballmer?
2) What does "beta" mean? Do I have to distribute the code even if my modifications make it unusable? Must beta testers be actual employees of the developer?
3) Who exactly is issuing the license? The original developer from years prior? Or the current modifying developer? Can Corel, as a legal entity, be classified as a licensor, or must a licensor be an individual?
4) Who exactly is the license granted to? Corel? Each of its individual employees?
5) If a beta tester leaks a copy of the beta, whose rights, in reference to Corel's specific modifications, are being violated? Can a developer restrict the distribution of a modification? What if the modification is a separate entity such a a patch?
Of course, not all of these issues would be brought up in a single trial, and some of them would be easy to figure out. Still, it needs to be done. Either do it now or do it later with someone else.
"Any exception to the GPL that is allowed to stand will destroy the whole point of the GPL."
I wrote a program using libXML, a GPL'd library. The program is not finished. In fact, if it were to leak out to the public it would cause me great embarrasment by highlighting my extreme lack of coding skills. In order to get the program into shape, I email it to a friend to test and report back with a bug list. I admonish him not to release it until I finish it. Am I breaking the law?
What if the software has been licensed to a legal entity such as a corporation? All employees are considered under a single license instance. This is why proprietary software often has "site" licenses. If an employee goes online and downloads the Linux kernel, they can do with it what they want since they hold the license, but they can't redistribute their companies tweaked version since the license still belongs to the company. To take it to an absurd extreme, if you come over to my house to borrow my computer you have no legal rights to upload any software from my box.
In a more realistic sense, there are thousands of companies that have modified GPL programs for their own use but aren't distributing them, so should we pursue legal action against them too?
There are more Free Software licenses potentially being violated than just the GPL. There's also the QPL, MPL and Artistic. BSD and X don't care so they don't count. However, any harm to the above is also an indirect harm to the GPL. No matter how isolationist you are, your neighbor's injustices affect you as well. Champion Free Software, not just an individual license.
"If they don't include full source for all GPLed software or if they require any sort of non-disclosure or non-redistribution agreement, just give RMS a call and the matter will be taken care off. The FSF sure could use a nice "donation" (a.k.a. out of court settlement)"
Ever wonder why so many people hate the GPL? It's because of all the lawyer-wannabees. Somewhere, someone has a great idea, but is afraid to implement it for fear that they interpreted word number 267 differently than you.
Nice to see that the heartwarming and constructive attitudes are still here on Slashdot.
Of course, this depends on whether using beta testers is considered "distributing". I don't think it is, but IANAL, and I'm not sure whether this issue has ever been before a court.
"But this doesn't sound as if Corel is truly dedicated to the GPL"
Pardon me for asking, but why should Corel be "truly dedicated" to the GPL? This is strange term to use, and one usually reserved for religions, political causes and spouses. The closest of the above would be a political cause (because the worshippers keep telling me it's not a religion).
I'll ignore the question of why the cause should be an individual license and not Free Software itself, but ask instead "why should Corel follow your cause?" Aren't they allowed to have their own causes? Aren't people allowed to think differently than you without arising the suspicions of the citizens committee? And most importatnly, why is no one is talking about possible violations of the Artistic license, or the QPL, or the MPL?
They haven't released any binaries yet. It's still in-house. That's means it's not released. Circular logic, but true. Until they DISTRIBUTE it, the GPL does not kick in. You may not like it, but tough, that's the GPL. Even though the beta testers may not be Corel employees, Corel Linux has still not been released.
When Corel puts the distribution up on a generally accessible server, or begins selling it, then they have released it. As long as Corel employees or its contractors (including beta testers who have to fill out an application first) are the only ones with access to the programs, they are not released.
What music sites need to do is put their MP3's and other media under the GNU General Public License. That way, if some punk Swedish kid tries to link to them with an tag, he must subsequently make his whole home page GPL as well. But because MP3's are not GPL, anyone in the world can link to them, and possibly even download and play them back on a non-GPL MP3 client.
Seriously though. An URL is just an address of a file. Plain and simple. It's equivalent to a citation in a bibliography or footnote. This is "fair use". There is nothing wrong with making a link to a file, it's allowed for under copyright law (in the US), even though the lawyers and politicos may not think so. If the MP3 owner does not want people linking to it, all they need to do is put it behind a secure server.
Before you jump to unwarranted conclusions, check your facts. The bug tracking system is broken. That doesn't mean that dozens of developers are just sitting down picking their noses and waiting for a release. They're fixing them despite the fact that they can't log the fixes for you to see.
Mandrake developers are active participants in the general and developer mandrake mailing lists. If there is a specific bug you are concerned with, post a question to the lists asking if it's fixed.
Mandrake hasn't been based on Redhat since 5.2. Yes, that's correct, 5.2. They forked the distros with 5.3 and everything else since has been their own.
They attempt to stay Redhat compatible, and this includes adding some Redhat apps and keeping the configurations the same. But they realized a while ago that they need to be their own distro and not merely a "better Redhat".
Cooker is their "development" distro. It is always being worked on and updated. When they feel that cooker is relatively stable, they fork off a beta distro, get it fully stable and release it.
Not all of KDE is binaries. Think about it. You have dozens of wallpapers, hundreds of icons, thousands of pages of manuals. Then you have themes, sounds, etc.
"I want A STANDARD WAY FOR THE **APP** TO DO IT AT INSTALL TIME"... "I want A STANDARD WAY FOR AN APP TO ADD ITS HELP TO THE HELP VIEWER."
As for all the shouting, why don't you "just do it"? I do believe there's a standard, but since I work with Qt and KDE/Qt, I can't say for sure. If there isn't, WRITE ONE YOURSELF AND SUBMIT IT TO KDE AND BE THE HERO OF THE DAY! If you're a developer, and you say you are, this should be a piece of cake. Everything already goes to standard directories and everything already uses standard files and everything uses standard formats. This isn't Microsoft. It's Open Source. It's Free Software. It's a community. That means if you have an "itch" and you can code, you go code and leave the whining to AC's.
Are you even talking about the same desktop as the rest of us?
a) Interoperability with Gnome is in the works as we speak. Remember that it wasn't until RMS gave his official pronouncement of "free" that the Gnome guys would even speak to the kde guys. Some still won't.
b) I haven't looked yet because I'm at work, but are you sure that it's not already there? Most kde apps I install with rpm add a menu item automatically.
c) There is a way, switchdesk, and it's used by Redhat and Mandrake. It's GPL so feel free to rip it off for your own use. Or use kdm/gdm and choose the desktop at login. Or use any of a half-dozen other wm choosers out there.
d) Ummm, the help is standardized. Everything's in html under $KDEDIR/share/doc/appname. Since kdehelp is a html browser, it makes sense that the kde help files be html. However, most sources include the sgml version as well, and use the ksgml2html tool to generate consistant help manuals.
Re your tagline: Yes, a lot of people use Gnome and KDE! WindowMaker is still my favorite window manager though:-) Is a tiny "K" or Foot for a root menu any worse than a right-click?
I won't rate my own site if this comes to pass, although I don't know what my ISP's position is. I do know that a lot of ISP's won't require ratings either. Call it civil disobedience. If this becomes law in the US, it will quickly reach the Supreme Court as a violation of Freedom of the Press. Under US law, the government can censor obscenity but they can't censor a site for merely refusing to rate itself.
"How can you claim that the first distribution was named "Linux"?"
SLS, Yggdrasil, et al., were all called "Linux". The name "GNU/Linux" didn't arrive until the FSF started to put together a distribution (Debian), which later went independent.
"Only thing i want to know is, why is BSD a programme, and Linux an operating system, when *BSD is the kernel, and the libraries and the tools, and linux is just a kernel?"
Simple, Linux is the name of the kernel, operating system, and the name of most distributions. Likewise, FreeBSD is also the name of the kernel, OS and distro.
Now I'm sure that this will get me flames since I didn't mention GNU/Linux. So I will. GNU/Linux is the name of a distribution, namely that non-existant distribution provided by the FSF. When RMS started the GNU project, he didn't set out to create an OS. Instead he wanted to make an OS plus everything else needed for normal everyday use. To quote, "The GNU system includes programs that are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and projects for their own purposes, but which we can use because they are free software." Thus, RMS was creating what we today call "distributions." Create a small core OS (which isn't complete yet) and add to it the best of free software in every category.
Who ever puts it names it. The first Linux distribution was called "Linux", so that's why people continue to say it, when technically it should be "Redhat Linux", "Debian GNU/Linux", "SuSE Linux", or whatever else the makers named it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a lot of people in the Free Software community who want to abolish patents entirely. Although I understand and agree with their sentiments, I don't think it has to go this far. Some very simple, basic reforms would eliminate 95% of the problems. The other 5% we can live with.
The way patents work (in the US at least) is that a patent is filed, a non-expert lawyer in the patent office grants it, and it's then up to third parties to bring it to court to repeal it. It's backwards!
Granting patents to software is not bad in and of itself. But what makes it so onerous is that most of the software patents being granted are silly. In regards to traditional (non-software) inventions, one can patent a new type of mousetrap, but one is not allowed to patent mousetraps per se.
The basic criteria of patents used to "novel and unintuitive to an expert in the field". Furthermore, it must be no prior use. The US Patent Office employs zero experts in the software field. They are unqualified to determine if an algorithm is novel or unintuitive. They are also incapable of determining if an algorithm has been used before.
There are two simple reforms that I think would make a big difference. First of all, the filers should demonstrate that the algorithm is novel and unintuitive, and it not prior art. During the patent process they would have to submit reports from experts saying so, and others in the industry could do this as well, for or against. I know that proving a negative is impossible, but one can still provide evidence of it. Second, the algorithm must be described in detail so that it is distinguishable from all other algorithms. It is the algorithm that is being patented, not the results. This would eliminate patents on "a method to locate data across a network" (mousetraps in general), and instead the patent would have to be "a method to route search requests using a xxx protocal over a yyy network which is 33% faster than the zzz method" (a specific mousetrap).
The exact details would have to be hashed out by the lawyers, of course. But the stupid process of file, grant and only then challenge must stop.
Helsinki News Service: "Man yells fire in crowded theatre, dozens trampled. Government responds by banning use of word 'fire'."
Seriously, my first introduction to virus protections came at a PCUG meeting. The speaker was explaining how to protect yourself against virii. He proceeded to write a virus in ten lines of DOS batch file code. Then he tried to infect the demo computer with it. It failed of course, but seeing exactly how a virus worked was very helpful.
Question is, what possibly criminal act was he committing?
Why should the courts/governments/police get involved? Cause it's fraud. Just because no one is out money doesn't mean they're not harmed. Imagine...
You call your dear mother long distance with one of those new-fangled prepaid thingies. However, instead of your mother answering, it's Debbie in Duluth making a living as a phone-whore. Good thing you didn't have it on speaker phone!
Or, your online TV guide lists "Dumbo" showing at 7:00. It's a great movie for kids, so you let your six year old watch it. At 6:59 you go to the back yard to do yard work. At 7:40 you return to find out that your previously innocent child has been watching hardcore porn for the best part of an hour because someone jacked the online TV listings.
Or, you walk into a building that house "First National Bank" above the door. It's a large marble building like banks should be. But once inside it turns out to be a Mustang Ranch franchise. Desperate to uphold your reputation in the community you turn to leave only to find that the door doesn't have a handle on this side.
One comment was here about just slapping the GPL on the Corel distro. Previous topics had posts mentioning that "Redhat is 100% GPL", "Debian is a GPL'd distro", etc.
Sorry folks, you can't license a distro under the GPL. It's not possible unless each and every line of code within each and every package is GPL, the new BSD or X. This is simply not the case in any distro, and probably never will be. You can't replace someone else's license with your own.
What a distro CAN do is to license their own code, scripts, etc., under the GPL. But this still requires absolutely no modifications to any (old) BSD, MPL, QPL, or Artistic code. I am aware of no distribution that does this. Yeah, it would be nice if every piece of software in the world were GPL, and it would also be nice if every single person in the world belonged to my political party and voted for my candidates solely, but this is the real world and we have to live in it.
For the past three days Slashdot has been an arena of amateur legalists arguing over what the GPL means (ignoring all other licenses in their religious fervor). Since a system of laws based upon uninformed personal opinion is highly dangerous, I think it's time for the courts to step in.
Let the GPL see the inside of a courtroom for once. Let the experts hash it out. The FSF needs to challenge Corel legally. Then we can find out if the GPL means what it says or means whatever people want it to mean at the moment.
Issues to hash out:
1) What does "distribute" mean. Can two friends share GPL code amongst themselves without running afoul of the slashdotters? Can Bill Gates share his private version of emacs with Steve Ballmer?
2) What does "beta" mean? Do I have to distribute the code even if my modifications make it unusable? Must beta testers be actual employees of the developer?
3) Who exactly is issuing the license? The original developer from years prior? Or the current modifying developer? Can Corel, as a legal entity, be classified as a licensor, or must a licensor be an individual?
4) Who exactly is the license granted to? Corel? Each of its individual employees?
5) If a beta tester leaks a copy of the beta, whose rights, in reference to Corel's specific modifications, are being violated? Can a developer restrict the distribution of a modification? What if the modification is a separate entity such a a patch?
Of course, not all of these issues would be brought up in a single trial, and some of them would be easy to figure out. Still, it needs to be done. Either do it now or do it later with someone else.
"Any exception to the GPL that is allowed to stand will destroy the whole point of the GPL."
I wrote a program using libXML, a GPL'd library. The program is not finished. In fact, if it were to leak out to the public it would cause me great embarrasment by highlighting my extreme lack of coding skills. In order to get the program into shape, I email it to a friend to test and report back with a bug list. I admonish him not to release it until I finish it. Am I breaking the law?
What if the software has been licensed to a legal entity such as a corporation? All employees are considered under a single license instance. This is why proprietary software often has "site" licenses. If an employee goes online and downloads the Linux kernel, they can do with it what they want since they hold the license, but they can't redistribute their companies tweaked version since the license still belongs to the company. To take it to an absurd extreme, if you come over to my house to borrow my computer you have no legal rights to upload any software from my box.
In a more realistic sense, there are thousands of companies that have modified GPL programs for their own use but aren't distributing them, so should we pursue legal action against them too?
There are more Free Software licenses potentially being violated than just the GPL. There's also the QPL, MPL and Artistic. BSD and X don't care so they don't count. However, any harm to the above is also an indirect harm to the GPL. No matter how isolationist you are, your neighbor's injustices affect you as well. Champion Free Software, not just an individual license.
"If they don't include full source for all GPLed software or if they require any sort of non-disclosure or non-redistribution agreement, just give RMS a call and the matter will be taken care off. The FSF sure could use a nice "donation" (a.k.a. out of court settlement)"
Ever wonder why so many people hate the GPL? It's because of all the lawyer-wannabees. Somewhere, someone has a great idea, but is afraid to implement it for fear that they interpreted word number 267 differently than you.
Nice to see that the heartwarming and constructive attitudes are still here on Slashdot.
Of course, this depends on whether using beta testers is considered "distributing". I don't think it is, but IANAL, and I'm not sure whether this issue has ever been before a court.
"But this doesn't sound as if Corel is truly dedicated to the GPL"
Pardon me for asking, but why should Corel be "truly dedicated" to the GPL? This is strange term to use, and one usually reserved for religions, political causes and spouses. The closest of the above would be a political cause (because the worshippers keep telling me it's not a religion).
I'll ignore the question of why the cause should be an individual license and not Free Software itself, but ask instead "why should Corel follow your cause?" Aren't they allowed to have their own causes? Aren't people allowed to think differently than you without arising the suspicions of the citizens committee? And most importatnly, why is no one is talking about possible violations of the Artistic license, or the QPL, or the MPL?
They haven't released any binaries yet. It's still in-house. That's means it's not released. Circular logic, but true. Until they DISTRIBUTE it, the GPL does not kick in. You may not like it, but tough, that's the GPL. Even though the beta testers may not be Corel employees, Corel Linux has still not been released.
When Corel puts the distribution up on a generally accessible server, or begins selling it, then they have released it. As long as Corel employees or its contractors (including beta testers who have to fill out an application first) are the only ones with access to the programs, they are not released.
What music sites need to do is put their MP3's and other media under the GNU General Public License. That way, if some punk Swedish kid tries to link to them with an tag, he must subsequently make his whole home page GPL as well. But because MP3's are not GPL, anyone in the world can link to them, and possibly even download and play them back on a non-GPL MP3 client.
Seriously though. An URL is just an address of a file. Plain and simple. It's equivalent to a citation in a bibliography or footnote. This is "fair use". There is nothing wrong with making a link to a file, it's allowed for under copyright law (in the US), even though the lawyers and politicos may not think so. If the MP3 owner does not want people linking to it, all they need to do is put it behind a secure server.
Before you jump to unwarranted conclusions, check your facts. The bug tracking system is broken. That doesn't mean that dozens of developers are just sitting down picking their noses and waiting for a release. They're fixing them despite the fact that they can't log the fixes for you to see.
Mandrake developers are active participants in the general and developer mandrake mailing lists. If there is a specific bug you are concerned with, post a question to the lists asking if it's fixed.
Mandrake hasn't been based on Redhat since 5.2. Yes, that's correct, 5.2. They forked the distros with 5.3 and everything else since has been their own.
They attempt to stay Redhat compatible, and this includes adding some Redhat apps and keeping the configurations the same. But they realized a while ago that they need to be their own distro and not merely a "better Redhat".
Cooker is their "development" distro. It is always being worked on and updated. When they feel that cooker is relatively stable, they fork off a beta distro, get it fully stable and release it.
I tried RH6.0 and it was very unstable on my system, so I tried Mdk6.0 and haven't had a problem since.
They did rush out a quick fix for a problem they were having with the init scripts. It never affected me though.
Not all of KDE is binaries. Think about it. You have dozens of wallpapers, hundreds of icons, thousands of pages of manuals. Then you have themes, sounds, etc.
"I want A STANDARD WAY FOR THE **APP** TO DO IT AT INSTALL TIME" ... "I want A STANDARD WAY FOR AN APP TO ADD ITS HELP TO THE HELP VIEWER."
As for all the shouting, why don't you "just do it"? I do believe there's a standard, but since I work with Qt and KDE/Qt, I can't say for sure. If there isn't, WRITE ONE YOURSELF AND SUBMIT IT TO KDE AND BE THE HERO OF THE DAY! If you're a developer, and you say you are, this should be a piece of cake. Everything already goes to standard directories and everything already uses standard files and everything uses standard formats. This isn't Microsoft. It's Open Source. It's Free Software. It's a community. That means if you have an "itch" and you can code, you go code and leave the whining to AC's.
Are you even talking about the same desktop as the rest of us?
a) Interoperability with Gnome is in the works as we speak. Remember that it wasn't until RMS gave his official pronouncement of "free" that the Gnome guys would even speak to the kde guys. Some still won't.
b) I haven't looked yet because I'm at work, but are you sure that it's not already there? Most kde apps I install with rpm add a menu item automatically.
c) There is a way, switchdesk, and it's used by Redhat and Mandrake. It's GPL so feel free to rip it off for your own use. Or use kdm/gdm and choose the desktop at login. Or use any of a half-dozen other wm choosers out there.
d) Ummm, the help is standardized. Everything's in html under $KDEDIR/share/doc/appname. Since kdehelp is a html browser, it makes sense that the kde help files be html. However, most sources include the sgml version as well, and use the ksgml2html tool to generate consistant help manuals.
God no! This is just a cheap CDE clone. I mean, they even use the same icons as CDE! I want at least a gram or two of originality.
Re your tagline: Yes, a lot of people use Gnome and KDE! WindowMaker is still my favorite window manager though :-) Is a tiny "K" or Foot for a root menu any worse than a right-click?
I won't rate my own site if this comes to pass, although I don't know what my ISP's position is. I do know that a lot of ISP's won't require ratings either. Call it civil disobedience. If this becomes law in the US, it will quickly reach the Supreme Court as a violation of Freedom of the Press. Under US law, the government can censor obscenity but they can't censor a site for merely refusing to rate itself.
"How can you claim that the first distribution was named "Linux"?"
SLS, Yggdrasil, et al., were all called "Linux". The name "GNU/Linux" didn't arrive until the FSF started to put together a distribution (Debian), which later went independent.
Under the GPL, their competitors can still pilfer their work, they just have to keep it open, that's all.
However, I see companies using other licenses instead: ASPL, Jikes, QPL, NPL, SCPL, etc.
"Only thing i want to know is, why is BSD a programme, and Linux an operating system, when *BSD is the kernel, and the libraries and the tools, and linux is just a kernel?"
Simple, Linux is the name of the kernel, operating system, and the name of most distributions. Likewise, FreeBSD is also the name of the kernel, OS and distro.
Now I'm sure that this will get me flames since I didn't mention GNU/Linux. So I will. GNU/Linux is the name of a distribution, namely that non-existant distribution provided by the FSF. When RMS started the GNU project, he didn't set out to create an OS. Instead he wanted to make an OS plus everything else needed for normal everyday use. To quote, "The GNU system includes programs that are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and projects for their own purposes, but which we can use because they are free software." Thus, RMS was creating what we today call "distributions." Create a small core OS (which isn't complete yet) and add to it the best of free software in every category.
Who ever puts it names it. The first Linux distribution was called "Linux", so that's why people continue to say it, when technically it should be "Redhat Linux", "Debian GNU/Linux", "SuSE Linux", or whatever else the makers named it.