Re: Debian use of GNU (Was: Re: Best of the logo *ideas* so far)

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

     1) it is ENTIRELY possible to create a distro that doesn't use any of GNU; and

It is certainly possible to make a system which uses Linux as the
kernel but is not a variant of the GNU system.  One could surely
manage to adapt Linux to serve as the kernel in a BSD system, for
example, with some amount of work, just as people made Linux
work as the kernel in the GNU system.

But if you put the same kernel into a different system, you'll
have...a different system.  A Linux-based BSD system would seem to
users like...the BSD system that it is.

We now have a Linux-based variant of GNU; it would be possible to make
a Linux-based variant of FreeBSD.  If the kernel were far more
important than the rest of the system, it would be a good idea to call
them both "Linux systems".  But since that's not so, neither the
actual GNU/Linux nor the hypothetical FreeBSD/Linux is a "Linux
system".