Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 15 Jan 2003 21:43:07 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 15 Jan 2003 21:43:07 -0500 Received: from modemcable166.48-200-24.mtl.mc.videotron.ca ([24.200.48.166]:50895 "EHLO xanadu.home") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 15 Jan 2003 21:43:02 -0500 Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 21:51:48 -0500 (EST) From: Nicolas Pitre X-X-Sender: nico@xanadu.home To: Richard Stallman cc: mark@mark.mielke.cc, , lkml , , , , , , Subject: Re: [OFFTOPIC] RMS and reactions to him In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Richard Stallman wrote: > The people who worked on Linux, the kernel, have plenty to be proud > of. They don't need to get credit for the GNU system too. Hundreds > of people worked to build the GNU system before 1991. For their sake, > I focus on what we did together, not on what I myself did. > > Calling the system "Linux" denies these people the basis for their > pride. Calling the system "GNU/Linux" gives recognition to all of > them, as well as to the people who have worked on Linux. Calling the system "Linux" does not deny anyone's pride. In fact a lot of people who worked on Linux the kernel might think the name "Linux" only makes the connection to Linus Torvalds and leave everybody else in the shade... but surprisingly enough all those people just don't feel that way. Now if you look at "Red Hat Linux" the distribution, they put a lot of work into packaging and bundling everything. But hey, some other companies like Mandrake appeared from nowhere, borrowed on what Red Hat has done since it's free software after all, and redistributed a mostly unchanged distribution (at least originally) but under the name "Mandrake Linux" instead. Yet we don't see Red Hat making a big fuss about that either. It's also strange that Cygnus distributed a large package called "CygWin" and not "GNU/CygWin", isn't it? Still that package contains a large percentage of pure GNU/FSF code... A name is a really bad place to try to credit people or organizations - it's simply not meant for that. A name must be nice, short and catchy. It's not something rational that you can define with all sort of reasoning for using a slash or other punctuations, if the word "Linux" should go first or last, how it should be parsed, etc. People don't give a damn about the meaning of a name, they just want it to sound nice. The problem with "GNU/Linux" is simple: it sucks. It's not elegant, and it's longer than simply "Linux". It's like people calling themselves "Al" or "Ben" instead of "Alexander" or"Benjamin". You can't put rational semantics into a name -- this is not something that depends on grammar, science, or number of lines of code, or anything else. The free software community finally completed the GNU system. This system is nowadays called simply "Linux". And that name was chosen by that community who put the system together, which community I'm sure contains a significant number of people who were original GNU contributors. Yet there is only _one_ person out of the hundreds who seems to be left out by the "Linux" name and tries to go against the crowd... If you really want the GNU project to be more widely known to the world, you'll need to use some other more effective ways to promote free software. Trying to force the name "GNU/Linux" will never stick for many reasons, even if it's only for something as irrational as "it sucks". Hey, I live in Canada and therefore I'm a Canadian. But last time I checked Canada was still located in North America. Yet there are a bunch of people living south in a country that is also only a part of America, even smaller in size, but they are calling themselves Americans just like if they owned it all. Of course calling those people "United-Statians" might have sucked a bit. But hey, we admit it's been common usage even if it's geographically inaccurate and go on with life. I, for one, admit and recognize all the effort and work the GNU project did and I really enjoy exercising my freedom of running the GNU system on my hardware. This, however, won't make me call this system "GNU/Linux" regardless. And this has absolutely nothing to do with trying to deny credits to the GNU project. Nicolas - 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/