I seem to recall that someone was building a Linux "router distro" based on Debian. Is that this company? I also hear that Debian thinks it is good for people to be taking their main distro and tweaking it for various special purpose apps. Are there any others I'm not aware of in the pipeline?
The Divx v. DVD thing had been beaten to death, but let us summarize:
Advantages of Divx v. DVD:
-- Able to watch the limited number of movies available in Divx format only. -- Do not have to return disks after renting them.
Advantages of DVD v. Divx:
-- PRIVACY. You don't need to let the DVD company know that you bought a disk. With Divx you'll be required to do that to get repeat views or to "purchase" the CD permanently. -- Price. Divx is more expensive. -- DVD does not tie up a phone line. Nor does it require a credit card to charge. -- DVD is more popular and thus is likely to win the format war, making Divx disks obsolete. This is especially bad given that if you don't "own" the disk and Divx goes under, you can't watch any of your movies. -- DVD is availble for computers. Divx is not. -- The DVD people are not resorting to questionable "astroturf" campaigns to prop up sales.
I'm writing this off the top of my head and might have missed something, but this right here shows that DVD is the no brainer choice. I wonder how many of the people who bought Divx were unsophisticated consumers talked into it by a Circuit City sales person? I'd guess a lot of them. I bet that few people who know the issues are choosing Divx.
That's one reason not to invest any money in a Divx player or a Divx disk. Why take a chance that they'll go belly up and you'll never be able to watch all those movies again?
I've exchanged some email with him in the past and he is intelligent, friendly, and has a good grasp of business issues in the software world. He's not ideologically committed to free software, but he does seem genuinely excited about the free release of Netscape's browser source. He (along with a handful of other great folks like Chris Toshok) are bright lights in a company whose business practices I have in general not liked.
While the author talks about freedom at the bottom of the rather lengthy essay, the vast bulk of it assumes that open source is about software that costs zero dollars. Perhaps that is what open source is about, but that is not what free software is about. Free software is about, among other things, the right to share software with your friends. Payments of royalties interferes with this and makes software non-free.
Also, this is yet another article that seems to have swallowed Eric Raymond's "Homesteading the Noosphere" document and reguritated it. Just look at the liberal sprinkling of terms from that document: "eyeballs", "respect", "gift culture", "potlatch". While Raymond's HtN is an interesting document, that is only one way to view the free software/hacking phenomenon. (Another way to describe hacking is to see it as a manifestation of obsessive/compulsive disorder for example). By treating the creation of free software is a quest for respect, Eric Raymond also strips it of its ideological significance. He sees coders as seeking respect much like stock traders seek money. Oddly enough, this just happens to dovetail perfectly with his own philosophy of free software, which doesn't include freedom in the same sense many and possibly most free software advocates think of it.
I should also note that charging a license fee commensurate with the value delivered to the person using the software (as some has suggested) would, at the limit, eliminate consumer surplus.
Just to clarify, the Netscape Public License (NPL) is a free software license. It does give Netscape special privileges, which I consider unfortunate. I would much have preferred to have them use the GPL, then adopt an FSF-like copyright assignment policy that gave them the right to distribute a proprietary version in order to get crypto, etc. Nevertheless, the NPL is free.
Hehe. I'm glad to see you took so much interest in my post to generate such a long reply. However, I'm not associated with Microsoft. You can easily review the many, many posts I've made on slashdot by checking my user profile. You can also review the 2000 newsgroup postings I've made at DejaNews. And you can look at my home page. I'm easily to research and I doubt you'll come to the conclusion I'm a Microsoft shill. I don't think they are the evil empire though. An internet dominated by Netscape or any other proprietary software company would be just as bad as one dominated by Microsoft.
While Mr. Zawinksi liked the early days of Netscape and the way they "changed the world", I find those early days among the most repugnant in the software industry. Netscape took a university developed browser - Mosaic - and applied a Microsoft embrace and extend philosophy to marketing it. I won't even go into the origins of Netscape. I've read a lot of stuff about how Marc Andreesen supposedly hijacked the Mosaic project and stuff. I don't know if it's true, and I don't care. What matters is that Netscape attempted to make the web proprietary with their Netscape only tags. In effect, they tried to do for browsers what Microsoft has done for so many other ways. And they succeeded at first, with 80+% of the browser market. Had they not underestimated Microsoft, I wonder what the web would be today? Might we all be paying the "Netscape toll" on the internet? Who knows. In a way, the relentless drive by Micrsoft to defeat Netscape brought about a lot of good things for net, most importantly open standards. (Where we go from here in a Microsoft dominated web is a different story).
While Netscape did do a good thing by releasing their browser source code as free software, I still don't think the company changed much. I do hear from people inside Netscape that they where genuinely exicited about the source code release and weren't just doing it as a cynical last desperate ploy to stave off extinction. I'll take them at their word. Nevertheless, at the same time Netscape was releasing its browser source code, it was also attempting to (in the opinion of many people) hijack the DNS standard with their "smart browsing" feature that redirected certain keywords to sites of Netscape's choice, not necessarily the DNS name holder. I guess not much has changed for them.
So I'm thankful that Netscape released their browser code as free software, I'm sufficiently unhappy with their behavior as a company that I am not sorry to see them pass into oblivion.
Try to imagine what would happen if GNU/Linux were under the JCL (Java Community License). Goodbye Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, etc. These companies could not exist because in order to sell cd's, they would have to negotiate a proprietary license agreement with Linus, the Free Software Foundation, the Apache group, any another other entity that had JCL licensed code in there. Even if each of these people wanted only 50 cents per copy per program that would add up fast. I doubt we would be where we are today with free operating systems if the JCL approach to licensing was taken.
To call the GPL coercive and viral is very inaccurate. Viruses are micro-organisms that invade your body and cause illness, usually in ways that you are not aware of and cannot stop. The GPL on the other hand never "infects" you in this manner. The only way you can find your code subject to its requirements is by either distributing GPL'd code or by including GPL'd code into your programs. Both of these are completely voluntary decisions. No one forces you to do either one.
As for being coercive, it is true that the GPL forces you do to certain things and keeps you from doing others. If you take my GPL'd code, I am preventing you from making a proprietary version of it. I won't let you start a company to sell an improved version without sources. In other words, I won't let you hurt me or other users. Keeping someone from hurting you is hardly restricting their freedom. Criminal laws against stealing, assault, etc. restrict freedom in some manner, but few people object to these. Hurting users by making proprietary versions of software may not be as bad as assault (I don't want it to be a crime), but it is still not a good thing and I don't think preventing it counts as restricting freedom in the sense that other people do.
The cost of SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle Financials are dwarfed by the consulting fees that purchasers pay out to consultants to install and configure it. Also, the fact that huge corporations are willing to pay for the software, doesn't mean that it cannot be free. An industry consortium could collectively fund the development, with the result being free software.
Your own belief in free speech apparently does not extend to allowing Richard Stallman to say what he thinks.
More importantly, Richard Stallman is not aiming to take away your freedom to call the system whatever you want. He is simply making his argument in an attempt to convince you do see things his way and to call it GNU/Linux voluntarily. This is a far cry from how proprietary software vendors operate.
While Richard Stallman doesn't control Debian, I would like to point out that the Free Software Foundation (which he is the president of) did provide early funding and support for the Debian project. In light of this, I think saying a "user and nothing more" is not warranted.
The Free Software Foundation also runs other free operating systems besides Debian GNU/Linux on their machines. For example, NetBSD. So they are not exclusively Debian users.
I am not aware of any plans to change the name from "Debian GNU/Linux". Additionally, Richard Stallman does not control the name of the Debian system, though the Free Software Foundation did provide early funding for it.
Debian is currently building a variant of the GNU system using the Hurd (the GNU project's kernel) in place of the Linux kernel. This will be called Debian GNU/Hurd.
The article is posted from a ".nl" domain, so it is possible, indeed likely that the writer is not a native English speaker. Please keep that in mind when assessing the essay. Also keep it in mind when (as someone already has) questioning the notion of this person writing a book.
English is the lingua franca of the Internet. Since it's the only language I speak and for other reasons I won't go into to avoid a flamewar I think that's a good thing. However, it can put people who aren't fluent in it at a disadvantage. Even people who can speak/read/write it fairly well might not be able to write fully grammatically correct idiomatic English. Unfortunately, this can put people at a disadvantage in discussions as it can make them seem confused when in fact their ideas might be clear. Of course, their ideas might possibly be murky as well, which makes comprehension doubly a problem!
I couldn't get through to the references site because it is too busy. However, there is an excellent FAQ posted to the rec.arts.startrek.tech group on faster than light travel. You can read it at:
The author is Jason W. Hinson, a graduate student in physics at Purdue.
This FAQ can get a little dense with technical details. (The graphs can be a bit difficult to interpret in the ASCII version). But the layman can definitely get the gist of why FTL travel is essentially forbidden by relativity, as well as some thoughts on overcoming the "light speed barrier".
Unfortunately, it is difficult to contribute to a a non-copyleft licensed project such as FreeBSD in a way that prevents proprietary software developers from using your code. Projects like FreeBSD and XFree86 made the choice that they wanted their work to be made available to proprietary developers, thus they lock out contributors who aren't willing to donate their work to that cause. (XFree86 is very explicit about this, I believe).
In the specific case of using GNU/Linux drivers on FreeBSD, have you considered asking the developer of the driver if he would permit that? He might be willing to license his driver under a second license that specifically permits linking with FreeBSD without bringing the whole thing under the GPL. I would certainly be willing to consider such a thing for my code.
I'm not so hung up on the GNU/Linux name myself. I believe one reason why Stallman insists on it is because he feels that many new users of it are not exposed to the free software philosophy of GNU. Instead, they pick up on the "anything is fine with me" philosophy of Linus. Unfortunately, Stallman does not always pick the best venues for his suggestions about GNU/Linux. (For example, the linux-kernal mailing list was quite a bad choice). And the fact that he corrects anyone who uses an unadorned "Linux" is surely annoying to some. And let's face it, GNU/Linux isn't a very catchy name. If he had something better (NOT Lignux:-) I think it would have had a much better chance of being adopted.
As usual I see many postings that show confusion over why the GNU project wants the "GNU/Linux" name to be used. These imply that the reason is because there is a large number of GNU components in the system. This is not the case. The reason is because the GNU Project had the vision and the goal of a completely free operating system, and systematically went about building it. Without the goal of a free operating system by the GNU project, Linux most certainly would not be what it is today.
The GNU project identified all of the major components of the operating system: the kernel, utilities, the shell, compiler tools, windowing systems, networking, and so on. It then found or built tools for each of these areas. When Linus wrote the Linux kernel and people looked around for the components necessary to build a complete operating system, they found them because that is what the GNU project set out to build.
It is tempting to say that the GNU Project did not write some of these tools - such as the X-Window system - and thus say that the GNU influence on the GNU/Linux operating system is exaggerated. However, the GNU project never set out to build every component themselves, nor did they ever claim that all components of the free operating system were there because of their efforts. Instead, they looked first for existing free tools to do the job, and wrote a replacement if one could not be found. X existed already, so a replacement was not needed. However, had the X-Window system not existed, or had it been proprietary, the GNU project would have developed a replacement for that too, just as they developed a replacement for the C library, and m4 macro processor, and many other things.
Call it GNU/Linux (if you choose) because the GNU project built ane operating system, not because they wrote any number of individual components. Without the GNU project, disjoint components is all that would exist.
I personally don't use the term GNU/Linux much because it is such a mouthful. However, I do think it is important to understand why the GNU people feel so strongly about it.
In 1983 when Richard Stallman founded the GNU project, his goal was to produce a 100% free Unix-like operating system. This was a difficult goal because a Unix OS contains many components: the kernel, the shell, compiler tools, editors, windowing systems, etc. Because the task was so big, he looked around for components that were already free that he could use in the GNU system. He found, for example, TeX and the X-Window System, which then fulfilled the system requirements for a typesetter and a windowing system respectively.
For some components, there was no free implementation, so the GNU project set out to write them. GNU Emacs replaced the proprietary vi editor (though a free vi clone was eventually written by someone else). The GNU C Compiler replaced the proprietary pcc. Bash replaced the Bourne shell. Etc. These tools were all written because there was no other free program that did the job. Nobody at the GNU project wanted to re-write free tools that already existed. The goal was a 100% free operating system, not a 100% free operating sytsem written 100% by the GNU project.
Like many complex projects, the GNU system took a long time to develop. Rather than wait until the entire system was complete before releasing it, various components were released as they were developed. (Call it the Bazaar model if you will). They put their available code into a repository. This was the master GNU ftp server at prep.ai.mit.edu. This archive contained the GNU system as a work in progress, including many tools that were ready for production use.
When Linus developed his kernel, people obviously needed the rest of the operating system components to go along with it. So how did people get these? They simply ftp'd to the GNU archive and downloaded all of the GNU operating system components that were availble. They combined these with the kernel, to produce the system they called Linux.
While you might not agree with Richard Stallman, I think it is easy to see why this would upset him. If someone downloaded the CVS archive of the free software project I am working on, finished it off before I could finish my version, then released it under a name that gave me no credit, I would probably be angry too. I think the reaction of the community if someone did this would be very negative. The GNU ftp site was their code repository and the builders of the early Linux distros did exactly this. They built a system that was largely GNU code (especially in the early days before distros got loaded up with lots of user level applications) but did not give credit to the GNU project.
Again, you might not see it this way. But I think that if the GNU project was something that you had founded and invested years of effort into, you might be a little bit miffed someone did this to you. While Stallman is often accused of being a bit strange, I find his attitude on the "GNU/Linux" issue quite normal.
I thought the Wood piece was amusing as well. Saw it on gnu.misc.discuss last night. I really liked his analogy that Stallman is the novelist and Raymond is the made for TV movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. Just remember, you can rent DVD's from a video store. There is no need to shell out the $25 bucks to buy something you'll only watch once.
I seem to recall that someone was building a Linux "router distro" based on Debian. Is that this company? I also hear that Debian thinks it is good for people to be taking their main distro and tweaking it for various special purpose apps. Are there any others I'm not aware of in the pipeline?
The Divx v. DVD thing had been beaten to death, but let us summarize:
Advantages of Divx v. DVD:
-- Able to watch the limited number of movies available in Divx format only.
-- Do not have to return disks after renting them.
Advantages of DVD v. Divx:
-- PRIVACY. You don't need to let the DVD company know that you bought a disk. With Divx you'll be required to do that to get repeat views or to "purchase" the CD permanently.
-- Price. Divx is more expensive.
-- DVD does not tie up a phone line. Nor does it require a credit card to charge.
-- DVD is more popular and thus is likely to win the format war, making Divx disks obsolete. This is especially bad given that if you don't "own" the disk and Divx goes under, you can't watch any of your movies.
-- DVD is availble for computers. Divx is not.
-- The DVD people are not resorting to questionable "astroturf" campaigns to prop up sales.
I'm writing this off the top of my head and might have missed something, but this right here shows that DVD is the no brainer choice. I wonder how many of the people who bought Divx were unsophisticated consumers talked into it by a Circuit City sales person? I'd guess a lot of them. I bet that few people who know the issues are choosing Divx.
That's one reason not to invest any money in a Divx player or a Divx disk. Why take a chance that they'll go belly up and you'll never be able to watch all those movies again?
That's what I meant.
I've exchanged some email with him in the past and he is intelligent, friendly, and has a good grasp of business issues in the software world. He's not ideologically committed to free software, but he does seem genuinely excited about the free release of Netscape's browser source. He (along with a handful of other great folks like Chris Toshok) are bright lights in a company whose business practices I have in general not liked.
While the author talks about freedom at the bottom of the rather lengthy essay, the vast bulk of it assumes that open source is about software that costs zero dollars. Perhaps that is what open source is about, but that is not what free software is about. Free software is about, among other things, the right to share software with your friends. Payments of royalties interferes with this and makes software non-free.
Also, this is yet another article that seems to have swallowed Eric Raymond's "Homesteading the Noosphere" document and reguritated it. Just look at the liberal sprinkling of terms from that document: "eyeballs", "respect", "gift culture", "potlatch". While Raymond's HtN is an interesting document, that is only one way to view the free software/hacking phenomenon. (Another way to describe hacking is to see it as a manifestation of obsessive/compulsive disorder for example). By treating the creation of free software is a quest for respect, Eric Raymond also strips it of its ideological significance. He sees coders as seeking respect much like stock traders seek money. Oddly enough, this just happens to dovetail perfectly with his own philosophy of free software, which doesn't include freedom in the same sense many and possibly most free software advocates think of it.
I should also note that charging a license fee commensurate with the value delivered to the person using the software (as some has suggested) would, at the limit, eliminate consumer surplus.
Just to clarify, the Netscape Public License (NPL) is a free software license. It does give Netscape special privileges, which I consider unfortunate. I would much have preferred to have them use the GPL, then adopt an FSF-like copyright assignment policy that gave them the right to distribute a proprietary version in order to get crypto, etc. Nevertheless, the NPL is free.
Hehe. I'm glad to see you took so much interest in my post to generate such a long reply. However, I'm not associated with Microsoft. You can easily review the many, many posts I've made on slashdot by checking my user profile. You can also review the 2000 newsgroup postings I've made at DejaNews. And you can look at my home page. I'm easily to research and I doubt you'll come to the conclusion I'm a Microsoft shill. I don't think they are the evil empire though. An internet dominated by Netscape or any other proprietary software company would be just as bad as one dominated by Microsoft.
While Mr. Zawinksi liked the early days of Netscape and the way they "changed the world", I find those early days among the most repugnant in the software industry. Netscape took a university developed browser - Mosaic - and applied a Microsoft embrace and extend philosophy to marketing it. I won't even go into the origins of Netscape. I've read a lot of stuff about how Marc Andreesen supposedly hijacked the Mosaic project and stuff. I don't know if it's true, and I don't care. What matters is that Netscape attempted to make the web proprietary with their Netscape only tags. In effect, they tried to do for browsers what Microsoft has done for so many other ways. And they succeeded at first, with 80+% of the browser market. Had they not underestimated Microsoft, I wonder what the web would be today? Might we all be paying the "Netscape toll" on the internet? Who knows. In a way, the relentless drive by Micrsoft to defeat Netscape brought about a lot of good things for net, most importantly open standards. (Where we go from here in a Microsoft dominated web is a different story).
While Netscape did do a good thing by releasing their browser source code as free software, I still don't think the company changed much. I do hear from people inside Netscape that they where genuinely exicited about the source code release and weren't just doing it as a cynical last desperate ploy to stave off extinction. I'll take them at their word. Nevertheless, at the same time Netscape was releasing its browser source code, it was also attempting to (in the opinion of many people) hijack the DNS standard with their "smart browsing" feature that redirected certain keywords to sites of Netscape's choice, not necessarily the DNS name holder. I guess not much has changed for them.
So I'm thankful that Netscape released their browser code as free software, I'm sufficiently unhappy with their behavior as a company that I am not sorry to see them pass into oblivion.
Try to imagine what would happen if GNU/Linux were under the JCL (Java Community License). Goodbye Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, etc. These companies could not exist because in order to sell cd's, they would have to negotiate a proprietary license agreement with Linus, the Free Software Foundation, the Apache group, any another other entity that had JCL licensed code in there. Even if each of these people wanted only 50 cents per copy per program that would add up fast. I doubt we would be where we are today with free operating systems if the JCL approach to licensing was taken.
To call the GPL coercive and viral is very inaccurate. Viruses are micro-organisms that invade your body and cause illness, usually in ways that you are not aware of and cannot stop. The GPL on the other hand never "infects" you in this manner. The only way you can find your code subject to its requirements is by either distributing GPL'd code or by including GPL'd code into your programs. Both of these are completely voluntary decisions. No one forces you to do either one.
As for being coercive, it is true that the GPL forces you do to certain things and keeps you from doing others. If you take my GPL'd code, I am preventing you from making a proprietary version of it. I won't let you start a company to sell an improved version without sources. In other words, I won't let you hurt me or other users. Keeping someone from hurting you is hardly restricting their freedom. Criminal laws against stealing, assault, etc. restrict freedom in some manner, but few people object to these. Hurting users by making proprietary versions of software may not be as bad as assault (I don't want it to be a crime), but it is still not a good thing and I don't think preventing it counts as restricting freedom in the sense that other people do.
You seem to think that freedom also equates to not having to listen to opinions which make you uncomfortable.
The cost of SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle Financials are dwarfed by the consulting fees that purchasers pay out to consultants to install and configure it. Also, the fact that huge corporations are willing to pay for the software, doesn't mean that it cannot be free. An industry consortium could collectively fund the development, with the result being free software.
Your own belief in free speech apparently does not extend to allowing Richard Stallman to say what he thinks.
More importantly, Richard Stallman is not aiming to take away your freedom to call the system whatever you want. He is simply making his argument in an attempt to convince you do see things his way and to call it GNU/Linux voluntarily. This is a far cry from how proprietary software vendors operate.
While Richard Stallman doesn't control Debian, I would like to point out that the Free Software Foundation (which he is the president of) did provide early funding and support for the Debian project. In light of this, I think saying a "user and nothing more" is not warranted.
The Free Software Foundation also runs other free operating systems besides Debian GNU/Linux on their machines. For example, NetBSD. So they are not exclusively Debian users.
I am not aware of any plans to change the name from "Debian GNU/Linux". Additionally, Richard Stallman does not control the name of the Debian system, though the Free Software Foundation did provide early funding for it.
Debian is currently building a variant of the GNU system using the Hurd (the GNU project's kernel) in place of the Linux kernel. This will be called Debian GNU/Hurd.
For those who just can't wait, I've mirrored the first section and a half (which is all I could get) at:
http://www.newhackcity.com/arenn/os s-whole.html.
The article is posted from a ".nl" domain, so it is possible, indeed likely that the writer is not a native English speaker. Please keep that in mind when assessing the essay. Also keep it in mind when (as someone already has) questioning the notion of this person writing a book.
English is the lingua franca of the Internet. Since it's the only language I speak and for other reasons I won't go into to avoid a flamewar I think that's a good thing. However, it can put people who aren't fluent in it at a disadvantage. Even people who can speak/read/write it fairly well might not be able to write fully grammatically correct idiomatic English. Unfortunately, this can put people at a disadvantage in discussions as it can make them seem confused when in fact their ideas might be clear. Of course, their ideas might possibly be murky as well, which makes comprehension doubly a problem!
slashdot posts excepted, right? heheh.
taco, hows about a "submit to ispell" button? Return highlighted mispelled words.
I couldn't get through to the references site because it is too busy. However, there is an excellent FAQ posted to the rec.arts.startrek.tech group on faster than light travel. You can read it at:
http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~hinson/ft l/
The author is Jason W. Hinson, a graduate student in physics at Purdue.
This FAQ can get a little dense with technical details. (The graphs can be a bit difficult to interpret in the ASCII version). But the layman can definitely get the gist of why FTL travel is essentially forbidden by relativity, as well as some thoughts on overcoming the "light speed barrier".
Unfortunately, it is difficult to contribute to a a non-copyleft licensed project such as FreeBSD in a way that prevents proprietary software developers from using your code. Projects like FreeBSD and XFree86 made the choice that they wanted their work to be made available to proprietary developers, thus they lock out contributors who aren't willing to donate their work to that cause. (XFree86 is very explicit about this, I believe).
In the specific case of using GNU/Linux drivers on FreeBSD, have you considered asking the developer of the driver if he would permit that? He might be willing to license his driver under a second license that specifically permits linking with FreeBSD without bringing the whole thing under the GPL. I would certainly be willing to consider such a thing for my code.
Thanks. Feel free to moderate me higher. :-)
:-) I think it would have had a much better chance of being adopted.
I'm not so hung up on the GNU/Linux name myself. I believe one reason why Stallman insists on it is because he feels that many new users of it are not exposed to the free software philosophy of GNU. Instead, they pick up on the "anything is fine with me" philosophy of Linus. Unfortunately, Stallman does not always pick the best venues for his suggestions about GNU/Linux. (For example, the linux-kernal mailing list was quite a bad choice). And the fact that he corrects anyone who uses an unadorned "Linux" is surely annoying to some. And let's face it, GNU/Linux isn't a very catchy name. If he had something better (NOT Lignux
As usual I see many postings that show confusion over why the GNU project wants the "GNU/Linux" name to be used. These imply that the reason is because there is a large number of GNU components in the system. This is not the case. The reason is because the GNU Project had the vision and the goal of a completely free operating system, and systematically went about building it. Without the goal of a free operating system by the GNU project, Linux most certainly would not be what it is today.
The GNU project identified all of the major components of the operating system: the kernel, utilities, the shell, compiler tools, windowing systems, networking, and so on. It then found or built tools for each of these areas. When Linus wrote the Linux kernel and people looked around for the components necessary to build a complete operating system, they found them because that is what the GNU project set out to build.
It is tempting to say that the GNU Project did not write some of these tools - such as the X-Window system - and thus say that the GNU influence on the GNU/Linux operating system is exaggerated. However, the GNU project never set out to build every component themselves, nor did they ever claim that all components of the free operating system were there because of their efforts. Instead, they looked first for existing free tools to do the job, and wrote a replacement if one could not be found. X existed already, so a replacement was not needed. However, had the X-Window system not existed, or had it been proprietary, the GNU project would have developed a replacement for that too, just as they developed a replacement for the C library, and m4 macro processor, and many other things.
Call it GNU/Linux (if you choose) because the GNU project built ane operating system, not because they wrote any number of individual components. Without the GNU project, disjoint components is all that would exist.
I personally don't use the term GNU/Linux much because it is such a mouthful. However, I do think it is important to understand why the GNU people feel so strongly about it.
In 1983 when Richard Stallman founded the GNU project, his goal was to produce a 100% free Unix-like operating system. This was a difficult goal because a Unix OS contains many components: the kernel, the shell, compiler tools, editors, windowing systems, etc. Because the task was so big, he looked around for components that were already free that he could use in the GNU system. He found, for example, TeX and the X-Window System, which then fulfilled the system requirements for a typesetter and a windowing system respectively.
For some components, there was no free implementation, so the GNU project set out to write them. GNU Emacs replaced the proprietary vi editor (though a free vi clone was eventually written by someone else). The GNU C Compiler replaced the proprietary pcc. Bash replaced the Bourne shell. Etc. These tools were all written because there was no other free program that did the job. Nobody at the GNU project wanted to re-write free tools that already existed. The goal was a 100% free operating system, not a 100% free operating sytsem written 100% by the GNU project.
Like many complex projects, the GNU system took a long time to develop. Rather than wait until the entire system was complete before releasing it, various components were released as they were developed. (Call it the Bazaar model if you will). They put their available code into a repository. This was the master GNU ftp server at prep.ai.mit.edu. This archive contained the GNU system as a work in progress, including many tools that were ready for production use.
When Linus developed his kernel, people obviously needed the rest of the operating system components to go along with it. So how did people get these? They simply ftp'd to the GNU archive and downloaded all of the GNU operating system components that were availble. They combined these with the kernel, to produce the system they called Linux.
While you might not agree with Richard Stallman, I think it is easy to see why this would upset him. If someone downloaded the CVS archive of the free software project I am working on, finished it off before I could finish my version, then released it under a name that gave me no credit, I would probably be angry too. I think the reaction of the community if someone did this would be very negative. The GNU ftp site was their code repository and the builders of the early Linux distros did exactly this. They built a system that was largely GNU code (especially in the early days before distros got loaded up with lots of user level applications) but did not give credit to the GNU project.
Again, you might not see it this way. But I think that if the GNU project was something that you had founded and invested years of effort into, you might be a little bit miffed someone did this to you. While Stallman is often accused of being a bit strange, I find his attitude on the "GNU/Linux" issue quite normal.
I thought the Wood piece was amusing as well. Saw it on gnu.misc.discuss last night. I really liked his analogy that Stallman is the novelist and Raymond is the made for TV movie.