I am also concerned that there is a significant difference in goals between the
"Linux community" and the "GNU software community" that makes it inappropriate
to merge the two, or to identify the Linux system too closely with the GNU
system. I think the following quotation from the GDB documentation will help
illustrate my concerns:
"Reporting a bug may help you by bringing a solution to your problem, or it may
not. But in any case the principal function of a bug report is to help the
entire community by making the next version of GDB work better. Bug reports
are your contribution to the maintenance of GDB."
This sounds good in theory but when the next official version is several months
away this is not very comforting. Why are there known significant bugs in GCC
2.7.2 with patches floating around but there is not an official 2.7.3 or
2.7.2.1 release? As far as I know, there is not even a central repository for
the collected patches.
My sense is that the Linux community is very much more concerned with helping
people build reliable systems *now* and resolving problems as quickly as
possible. If Linux is to be taken seriously for real world applications, I
believe this continued focus is essential. I also feel that the generally
non-politcal nature of the Linux community contributes substantially to
whatever success it has achieved.
I believe there are significant differences in the attitudes of the communities
developing free software, which are quite possibly more important than the
software itself for identification purposes.
Overall, I identify with the attitudes of the Linux community, and that's why I
proudly say that I run a Linux system, and tell people that I am part of an
international team cooperating on developing this free operating system.
Leonard