Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 8 Jan 2003 02:52:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 8 Jan 2003 02:52:49 -0500 Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]:1481 "EHLO fencepost.gnu.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 8 Jan 2003 02:51:53 -0500 From: Richard Stallman To: billh@gnuppy.monkey.org CC: mark@mark.mielke.cc, lm@bitmover.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, paul@clubi.ie, riel@conectiva.com.br, billh@gnuppy.monkey.org In-reply-to: <20030107141758.GA10770@gnuppy.monkey.org> (billh@gnuppy.monkey.org) Subject: Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers? Reply-to: rms@gnu.org References: <20030102061430.GA23276@mark.mielke.cc> <20030103040612.GA10651@work.bitmover.com> <20030104220651.GA30907@merlin.emma.line.org> <20030104222330.GA1386@work.bitmover.com> <20030105221345.GA31840@mark.mielke.cc> <20030106173949.GA1712@gnuppy.monkey.org> <20030107141758.GA10770@gnuppy.monkey.org> Message-Id: Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 03:00:22 -0500 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2616 Lines: 52 activistic political structure to bind a project like this, but the successful execution of Linux as a large scale political, social and economic product (credit to folks like Linus, Alan Cox, Stephen Tweedie, etc...) When you say "Linux" here, do you mean the kernel, or the whole GNU/Linux system? With all due respect, I think you may not have answered this question for yourself, because the people that you name are people who worked on the kernel, but the success that you talk about is the success of the whole system. (No kernel alone could have had this effect.) The practice of referring to the whole system by the same name as the kernel alone leads to constant confusion between the two. You will often see statements that "Linux is a Unix-like operating system, like Solaris or FreeBSD, which is released under the GNU GPL." That is false regardless of what meaning you assign to "Linux". The only way to avoid confusion is to stop calling the whole system by the name used for the kernel. really paved the way for the entire open source community as we understand it. Our community is the free software community; it was built by the idealism of the free software movement. Like any community, it contains people with different views. Nowadays many of the people in our community support the open source movement. The open source advocates are legitimate members of the community, and some have contributed to it. They have a right to form a movement to promote their views, but that movement was started only in 1998, long after the community existed. Their movement did not build the community, and it should not be named after them. Speaking of which, your ideas seem to have a lot in common with the free software movement. I wonder if you thought that the open source movement was the only one and that we all support it. (Many inaccurate articles give that impression.) If you read about the free software movement, you might decide we are closer to your views. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/, and in particular http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html for an explanation of the difference between the two movements. We and they have similar practices, which is why we and they can work together some of the time, but what we say about it is very different from what they say. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/