Re: Debian GNU or Debian GNU/Hurd?

[Kevin Kreamer <kkreamer@etherhogz.org>]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 09:56:00AM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann said:
> The Hurd (or the GNU Hurd if you want to m,ake it clear it is a GNU project
> and part of the GNU system) is the Hurd or the GNU Hurd, but never GNU/Hurd.
> It is never "Hurd", "HURD", "GNU Hurd" or "GNU HURD", and also not "the GNU
> HURD" or "the HURD" or other spellings of the Hurd.
> 
> You can say GNU/Hurd or GNU/Hurd system if you want the whole GNU system
> (including the Hurd, but also XFree86 etc).  You can say Debian GNU/Linux
> when referring to the GNU/Hurd system as shipped by Debian.

Somehow I see this going the way of Xwindows[sic].  Specifically, as 
a frequent correction offered by pedants to uninterested newbies.  In 
any case, no matter whether it is "right" or not, a person new to all 
of this will most likely say "the Hurd" but leave out the "the" with 
"GNU Hurd", as that sounds the best[1].  Also keep in mind there will 
always be some people who consistently misspell it as "HURD" or some 
variation thereof under the assumption that since it is an acronym[3]
it must be capitalized[4].

For the record[5], I prefer "Debian GNU/Hurd" as the name for Debian's 
release of "GNU Hurd", which includes a set of servers called "the 
Hurd".

Oh well, back to hacking.

Kevin

[1] where "best" means the most like the rest of English[2].
[2] see a current thread of -devel for what the rest of English entails.
[3] an mutually recursive at that..  what's the proper method for 
    referring to "HIRD"?
[4] these are the same people who refer to Perl as PERL.
[5] in case anyone actually cares.
-- 
Kevin Kreamer