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Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 10:10:43 -0600
From: Jeff Randall <randall@uph.com>
To: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?
Message-ID: <20030110101043.A19070@uph.com>
References: <20030104222330.GA1386@work.bitmover.com> <E18VFaz-0008S0-00@fencepost.gnu.org> <20030105221345.GA31840@mark.mielke.cc> <E18Vao9-0002JZ-00@fencepost.gnu.org> <20030106173949.GA1712@gnuppy.monkey.org> <E18Vtxz-0002cB-00@fencepost.gnu.org> <20030107141758.GA10770@gnuppy.monkey.org> <E18WB8Q-0004k6-00@fencepost.gnu.org> <20030108115327.GA5020@gnuppy.monkey.org> <E18WlrH-0000NO-00@fencepost.gnu.org>
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On Thu, Jan 09, 2003 at 06:13:07PM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> There is no such thing as an open source community.  The people who
> founded the open source movement in 1998, and the people who support
> it now, are part of the free software community.  (We in the free
> software movement built the community in the 80s with our determined
> effort.)
> 
> These people are legitimate members of our community, and they have a
> right to form a movement to promote their views; but their views
> didn't build the community, so it should not be named after their
> movement.

They are only part of YOUR community if they want to be part.  Otherwise,
they are members of a seperate communuity that may or may not have similar
goals as yours.


> Why do so many people misinterpret the events this way?  The practice
> of calling the system "Linux" leads to and encourages the
> misinterpretation.  It leads people to suppose that the most important
> part of the development of the system must have occurred when Linus
> Torvalds started to work on it.

I also note that you didn't start your campaign to rename it lignux or
GNU/Linux until it was well established and very commonly known as Linux.

To a lot of people, myself included, this feels like an attempt to steal
credit and draw attention to yourself and the FSF by trying to hijack the
name of a project that you didn't contribute to, but instead used tools you
provided such as gcc and glibc.

It may be publicity (and there may be no such thing as bad press), but
it's not favorable publicity, and it rubs a lot of people who have been
involved with Linux a long time the wrong way.


-- 
randall@uph.com    "It's a big world and you can hit it with any airplane."
                                           -- Flying, August 2000, Page 90.
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