You're wrong and really far out the spirit of GNU. The GPL is here to
protect the right for people to *use* programs. This is the ultimate
goal. Protecting the programmer is the intermediate step.
If, by releasing your code under the GPL *and* making it Linux-specific,
you're denying the right for others to compile and run your program.
There are others around. Others who may want for example to use the
HURD kernel. Or the FreeBSD. or SunOS. Remember those?
If GPL programs are being made Linux specific while it should be the
contrary, then, by all means create a Linux Public License, create a
Linux C Library, create a Linux-Compiler, in other words, create a LINUX
operating system.
For the moment, you're only using the kernel, the rest is GNU.
Linux is so popular due to the extremely portable GNU programs that were
written before. The original idea was to create a full blown OS, but
they wrote software that would run in a wide range of others operating
systems that were Unix-like and have some support for POSIX/ANSI-C
compliance. Now we have a full blown OS (Linux/GNU) and you're have the
*very opposite idea*: "to hell with standards, I like Linux, I program
for Linux." What if in the future I want (it is my right, remember?) to
use the HURD as my kernel? Then all Linux-GPL programs would be of no
use to me, unless someone take the pains of writing a
Linux-compatibility module for the HURD (like in freebsd?).
And besides what kind of programs are you talking about? Come on, any
program that doesn't make hardware access can be written in glibc
without any pain at all. Like GNU.
I think you should remember this and respect this idea. It was this
idea that is making you code freely these days.
[]s fabricio
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