To Linux or not to Linux
Scripsit "Steinar H. Gunderson" <sgunderson@bigfoot.com>
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 01:46:54PM +0300, Yavor Doganov wrote:
>> now we can call it simply GNU (given the fact that both hurd and
>> kfreebsd-gnu are rocking and under active development). "Linux
>> distribution" is just wrong (and rather annoying).
> Can we please discuss this when we actually have a release with something
> not Linux as the kernel? :-)
Actually the question may be relevant irrespective of the status of
the non-Linux ports.
The "Linux" trademark, which used to be owned by Linus personally, has
apparently been transferred to "the Linux Mark Institute"
<http://linuxmark.org>, who have stated an intent to demand money from
distributors who use the trademark. For-profit licenses start at $0,
whereas a non-profit entity such as Debian must pay $200 a year to use
the trademark. [Sic!]
I think we originally called our system "Debian GNU/Linux" as a way to
credit and show our respect to the major pieces of software that made
Debian possible. I'm completely for giving credit where credit is due,
but if we -- as a nonprofit association subsisting on donations
(whether of cash, hardware, bandwith, time) -- have to pay money to be
*allowed* to give proper credit, we ought to rethink that decision.
In most places we already call our operating system simply "Debian". I
think we should just go through the website (and CD generation scripts
and such) and remove the few remaining references to "GNU/Linux".
--
Henning Makholm "We can hope that this serious deficiency will be
remedied in the final version of BibTeX, 1.0, which is
expected to appear when the LaTeX 3.0 development is completed."
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