Re: People Demanding Credit in the Press Release Silliness
On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Daniel Robbins wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, Douglas Stewart wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, Yoav Cohen-Sivan wrote:
> >
> > > It is a sort of Press Release whipped-up by the Debian Project Leader.
> > > I really didn't intend to chastise him for this - I am a staunch Debian
> > > advocate. I just wanted to remark that the "press release" was a bit
> > > low-key on attributing the GNU project and Linus for most of Debian.
> > > Seeing as how it looks like this is a release meant for the general
> > > public I deem it only fair that they think of Debian as an
> > > implementation of the GNU project and the Linux Kernel, and not as some
> > > new OS. I would prefer Debian stood on its own merit.
> >
> > Please people, let's not get ridiculous about this. It's called Debian
> > GNU/Linux, which is more than enough credit for GNU. As Linus has said
> > before, the only really essential GNU tool for Linux to exist was gcc.
> > Everything else is available (though usually inferior to the GNU
> > implementation).
I believe FSF funded Debian initially. Money is probably one of the most
important ingredients in getting any project started.
>
> It is my understanding the Linux was created by many people generously
> donating their skills and time. We should try to give credit where credit
> is due - but these people selflessly and generously donated their time,
> and I don't see them demanding personal recognition - in fact I doubt they
> would because they are concerned more with helping others than receiving
> personal credit to boost their ego... at least I hope this is the case.
> I don't think it is of much importance who is mentioned in the press
> release. Do Linus or GNU/FSF really care? We know their contributions,
> that's the important thing; the average reader of the press release will not
> care.
It's about politics. Name recognition is important, it is the reason many
people are motivated to do things, and FSF is important because it is a
political force with some clout int he software industry. Without an
orginization, we'd just be a bunch of hackers screwing around with pieces
of code. The FSF helps to give some legitamacy to free software. One would
be surprised how much the UNIX community uses gcc and how many systems use
GNU tools. And I bet those people at FSF do care, and probably Linus
cares. If he didn't, Linux wouldn't be the OS it is today.
Will
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