Re: GNU/Linux stance by Richard Stallman

Jakob 'sparky' Kaivo (jake@nodomainname.net)
Fri, 26 Mar 1999 09:39:53 -0800 (PST)


I wrote a response to that article, CmdrTaco never felt it worthy of
posting. See http://jakob.kaivo.net/writings/gnu_in_gnu-linux.html for the
full writeup, but basically GNU software != Free Software Foundation (a
lot of hackers write code for the GNU project but don't assign copyright
to FSF).

On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Stephen Frost wrote:

> On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Tom Holroyd wrote:
>
> > >> Richard Stallman stood up and insisted that
> > >> Linux be called GNU Linux?
> >
> > You know, he was talking about the distributions and not the kernel
> > itself. People tend to refer to RedHat's or other's distributions as
> > "Linux"* when in fact "Linux"* refers only to the kernel. Stallman only
> > wants the growing number of RedHat users and Debian users and SuSE users
> > etc. to realize the fact that there is a lot more to a distribution than
> > just the kernel, and that large, important parts of most distributions is
> > GNU. So calling a Slackware CD "Linux" is technically incorrect (not that
> > that will stop anybody from doing it).
> >
> > [By the way, feel free to delete everything from your system that says
> > "GNU" when you do --version, if you don't like it.]
> >
> > * Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds
>
> Just some stats on what one persons estimation was of the distribution
> of code in SuSe:
>
> Code Contribution Distribution for S.u.S.E. 5.2
>
> Package Name: suse5.2.codd
> Package Size: +514659722 bytes.
>
> 1.uncredited: 82733250 (16.075%)
> 2.free software foundation, inc: 51254116 (9.958%)
> 3.sun microsystems, inc: 38243234 (7.43%)
> 4.the regents of the university of california: 23581801 (4.582%)
> 5.x consortium: 18163125 (3.529%)
> 6.thomas g. lane: 8464917 (1.644%)
> 7.the university of washington: 7832780 (1.521%)
> 8.digital equipment corporation: 7206660 (1.4%)
> 9.snns group, ipvr, univ: 4366722 (0.848%)
> 10.aladdin enterprises: 4108079 (0.798%)
> 11.silicon graphics, inc: 3680070 (0.715%)
> 12.robert nation: 2465545 (0.479%)
> 13.maorong zou: 2438025 (0.473%)
>
> Don't see much justification for calling it GNU/Linux.
>
> Rest of the article at
> http://www.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/17/1034201
> for those interested in what I'm taliing about.
>
>
> Stephen
>
>
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