🚀 go-pugleaf

Christopher Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:

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

True.

> 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)

Note that quite a few distributions are moving towards Grub these days.

> 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 

The point is that without glibc there, none of the packages you have
installed would work. That makes it a pretty *important* "0.1%", IMNSHO.

> 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.

So why don't you choose to see it as the partnership that it is, rather
than viewing it as "_demand_ing quasi-worship"?

> 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.

Thank you for Godwinating.

~Tim
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