🚀 go-pugleaf

The world rejoiced as jmd@arse.net wrote:
> In comp.unix.admin Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net> <ruhl@4dv.net> wrote:
>
>> the major point: why give credit in the name to a particular
>> organisation, one which hasn;t even contributed the majority of
>> code?  It doesn't make sense.
>
> You're absolutely right - the Linux kernel (i.e. the bit of the
> operating system which is actually called "linux" is only a very
> small part of the total code for any distribution.
>
> Almost everything in the distribution is covered by the Gnu general
> public license.

Is that an actual statistic, or is it just one that you made up?

The only system I recall installing where "almost everything" was
covered by the GPL was an early install of GNU Hurd, before the Debian
project for that started up.

I've got great gobs of stuff licensed under the LGPL (which is not the
GPL) as well as BSD licenses as well as other licenses.  

None of X is licensed under the GPL, for instance.

And you're leaping straight into the fallacy that the license has
anything to do with the "GNUness" of the software.  

The Linux kernel itself isn't GNU software, by virtue of its absence
from <http://www.gnu.org/software/linux.html>.

GNU Software seems likely to be most properly defined as the software
that has been approved as "GNU Software" by the Free Software
Foundation.  The total list consists of 234 pieces of software.

Conspicuously _ABSENT_ from the official list are such important
things as:
 - X11
 - TeX
 - Linux
 - KDE
 - LILO (what you probably use to boot Linux)
 - Perl
 - Python
 - Apache
 - RPM
 - dpkg
 - netbase (without which you have no networking)

My system has 1175 packages installed at the moment, which means that
supposing I had every single one of the 234 pieces of "GNU Software"
installed, a total of 19.9% of my system would consist of "GNU
Software."  I don't have all of them installed, and likely have rather
less than half of them installed.  (In contrast, I _do_ have every
single one of the items I listed on the "absent" list.)

If you are truly in the mood to play statistical games, then I think
it is reasonably defensible to claim that the amount of "GNU Software"
on my system is most likely somewhere around 10% of the total.  I'll
not bother doing a precise census of the 234 packages; that would be a
pedantic waste of time.

And it would miss the point.  The point is that there are strong
arguments for the notion that there have been a wide variety of
influences on the systems released as "Linux distributions."  The
notion that there is inherently any FSF monopoly on "influence" is
propaganda.

When the FSF _demands_ this kind of "quasi-worship," it just gets
peoples' backs up, and discourages them from expressing gratefulness
where gratefulness is due.

It's much the same as when Americans head to Europe and expect people
to virtually bow at their feet for having liberated them from Nazi
Germany in World War II.  If they were to just _SHUT UP_, the locals
would probably get around to it.  But after having _demands_ for
gratefulness thrown in their faces, the locals will not be inclined to
be particularly charitable to the arrogant foreigners, especially when
little consideration is given to the fact that various other nations
(such as Britain, Canada, Russia, and resistances throughout Northern
Europe) were fighting the good fight reasonably successfully before
the US got into the war.

Turn it into a hissy fight over who _really_ won the war and all you
get is everyone irritated at each other, and a nicely "improved"
reputation of _Arrogant American Tourists!_

And that's pretty much what has happened in the GNU/Linux debate.
Everyone gets (legitimately) irritated about the matter, and the
primary end product is that RMS and the FSF have a reputation of being
somewhat like the _Arrogant American Tourists._  "That Stallman's just
out to demand credit for everything!"

There's a relevant Ghandi quote...

  "My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people:
  those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to
  try to be in the first group; there was much less competition."

I think RMS would probably be quite a bit happier if he tried a little
less hard to take credit for "Free Software."  He'd probably _get_
more credit, too.
-- 
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