Re: Debian trademark [was: Debian GNU/w32, may ready to be started?]

[Jules Bean <jules@jellybean.co.uk>]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 06:40:20PM +0900, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
> 
> I thought it was Debian GNU/Linux because we are using 
> GNU toolchain to build Linux, or something.

Not really.  It's called GNU/Linux because the 'bulk' of the system,
at least the important parts of the system, are the gnu
project. Including, (but not only): the GNU Compiler Collection, the
GNU C Library, the GNU fileutils, the GNU shellutils, GNU Bash, the
GNU Debugger, GNU grep, gzip, GNU readline, GNU tar, GNU textutils.

RMS asserts that that is *such* a significant proportion of the system
that it deserves credit in the name.  I'm inclined to agree,
personally.

Of course, it would actually be possible to replace a lot of that
stuff with the BSD Lites or OpenBSD versions; at that point, we'd have 
something which deserved the moniker 'GNU' much less.

> Naming is not really important, and I really couldn't care.
> Why insist on calling it Debian, or calling cygwin system
> GNU/win32, when they themselves moved on from 
> calling themselves from similar name?

Naming is important to the people who's names you use.

It is polite to ask the Debian project whether or not the Debian name
is used; it is polite to ask the FSF whether the GNU name should be
used.

I would be very upset if someone called anything the 'Jules Bean
foobar' without asking me first.  Unless they happened to be called
that too...

Jules