Re: RMS comments: Gnome part of the GNU operating system.
On 24 July 2000 at 12:08, Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> wrote:
>
> So I am a heretic to the Church of GNU. And you know what? I don't much
> care. I write free software for my reasons, not his or yours or anyone
> else's. I don't and won't force it on other people just because I think
> it's right. And until Richard can stop doing the same, he doesn't and
> won't represent me.
You seem to be missing the point. Richard is not upset because Linus
or you or anyone else disagrees with him about free software; he's
upset because people seem to completely forget that the GNU Project
has contributed the significant majority of the software required to
make GNU/Linux boot. He's not saying "Call it GNU/Linux because it's
free software as in free speech and under the GPL", he's not saying
"Call it GNU/Linux because it will make us look better if you do /
because it makes us look bad if you don't", etc. He's saying you
should call it GNU/Linux because it *is* GNU/Linux. Linux is, very
simply, a kernel and LILO. Your computer would not work the way it
does now without the contributions of the GNU people. Granted, if
they hadn't written, someone else might have. However, the dominant
part of the system most people call "Linux" is still GNU software.
Write a new C compiler, new binutils, shells, etc., specifically for
the Linux effort and maybe you can drop the "GNU/" part.
I don't really get involved in the free software vs. open source
software debates anymore; I sit here doing my job, writing code for
perl in emacs to interact with mySQL databases served by Apache. I
make my money, I GPL my software, and I mind my own business. But
Richard isn't talking about ideology here. He's claiming credit where
credit is due--not just for himself, but for a fairly large project
worked on by numerous people across the globe who have expended large
parts of their lives to write the software you lump under the name
"Linux".
Chris
--
Christopher Tessone Computer Programmer
Illinois Mathematics & Science Academy Learning-at-a-Distance Program
http://www.imsa.edu/~tessone/
GnuPG Key: http://www.imsa.edu/~tessone/mykey.asc
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