🚀 go-pugleaf

On 20 Jan 1999 15:43:44 -0600, Jay Belanger <jay@vh213601.truman.edu>
wrote: n
>> Stallman and FSF tried to get the Linux community to use the term GNU/Linux
>> in place of Linux.
>> The suggestion was unanimously rejected.
>> [Linus Torvalds gave a marvellous demonstration
>> of how to carry on a rational discussion with fundamentalists.]
>> GNU/Linux does not exist outside the overheated imaginations of FSF fanatics.
>
>The suggestion of using "lignux" was, quite appropriately in my
>opinion, nearly unanimously rejected.  However I see "GNU/Linux"
>referred to quite a bit, even outside the FSF.  Granted, using "Linux"
>to refer to the whole operating system seems to me to be by far more
>common than "GNU/Linux", but both are out there.

On the one hand, the FSF "demand for recognition," as assortedly
expressed in the (happily soundly rejected) "lignux" debacle and, more
recently, with the promotion of "GNU/Linux," seems to me to be a
somewhat sad thing.

On the other hand, it *does* correctly point out that a whole lot of the
software used in "Linux systems" happens not to be either:
  a) Only for use with the Linux kernel
   (great gobs of it run on many "systems that resemble UNIX," and even
    other places like OS/2, VMS, Win32, and even MVS...), or
  b) Produced by people that might identify themselves as associated
  with Linux.

TeX wasn't developed by "Linux folk." Nor was Perl, or Python, or GCC,
or GhostScript, or XFree86, or any other number of other things that
have been appropriated for use with "Linux systems." All may have "Linux
participants," but aren't "Linux" projects. 

The FSF folk propose the use of the term "GNU System," due to the
similarities in intent and in licensing, and since there probably is
more "Linux software" that is associated with "GNU projects" than with
any other source of code.  In effect, they suggest naming the system
"democratically" with votes being generated by where the code came from,
and since they win on the basis of plurality, they get dibs on the
name. 

It's quite fair for people that use Linux to recognize that there are
many code sources to which gratefulness is owed.  Unfortunately,
*demanding* gratefulness is not in terribly good taste, and the
perception of that demand causes folks to want to "push back."

-- 
"MS Windows is the computer equivalent of burger chains and bowling
lanes. It is software that "works" only if you lower your expectations
to a point where you have essentially buried them." -- Sam
cbbrowne@hex.net- <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>