🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <36A89F39.4DA32F4A@urbanophile.com>,
Aaron M. Renn <arenn@urbanophile.com> wrote:
>If I use GNU MP and Bison to create a desktop calculator, I won't call it
>"MP/Bison/RennCalc" even if a majority of the code is GNU components. 
>Instead I would just call it "RennCalc" because it was my vision to create
>the desktop calculator.

But what if the person who developed GNU MP was planning to develop a
desktop calculator, and maybe was already working on it?  Does the fact that
the other developer had that vision make your calculator "GNU/RennCalc"?

If not, then why does the fact that the FSF had plans for an operating system
make a system that someone else envisioned and built, using some of their
components, "GNU/foo"?

>Similarly, the reason to call it the GNU/Linux system is that it was the GNU
>project's vision of a free operating system that make that free operating
>system possible.  How many components of it were created by the GNU project
>or anyone else is irrelevant.

Except that, so far as I can tell, it was Linus's vision of writing an
operating system (using components from wherever he found them) that made
Linux happen.  So it should be called Linux.

Or perhaps BSD/Linux, since it was the vision of the BSD engineers that
they could use TCP/IP routines as a fundemental part of an operating system,
so, an operating system following "their vision" (i.e., incorporating TCP/IP)
should be called BSD/foo.

I don't buy it.  The FSF didn't do Linux.  Linux would have come about whether
the FSF's ultimate goal was a good toolchain or an operating system, because
it uses the toolchain and utilities.  FreeBSD uses a comparable amount of FSF
code, but it's not GNU/FreeBSD.

Essentially, the problem is, you can't wait until someone fulfills your goals
and then say "ah-hah!  That's my goal, therefore, I can put my name on it."

Now, GNU Hurd is a GNU operating system.  But Linux is a Linus Torvalds
operating system, with components from wherever they're handy.

-s
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