Re: [libreplanet-discuss] What do you think about calling free systems as "GNU" systems (even if there is no GNU or Linux-libre)?

[J.B. Nicholson]

Julien Kyou wrote:
> Using GNU as a descriptor 'even in the absence of GNU for freedom
> respecting distros' feels right to me, its not credit its a brand. GNU =
> Freedom, Should be true.

GNU does nothing to stop hackers from porting it to run on nonfree kernels. 
Hence today we have GNU/kWindows (the GNU OS running atop the kernel from 
Microsoft Windows), GNU/kFreeBSD (the GNU OS running atop the kernel from 
FreeBSD), and GNU/HURD (the GNU OS running atop the HURD microkernel).

There's no way to tell which of these are free software by looking at only 
the name. We can be sure that the GNU portion is free software throughout, 
but in the context of a distribution the kernel portion is unknown. 
Distributions will sometimes take a free OS such as GNU, and make GNU run 
atop a free kernel, and then include nonfree drivers. The total end-product 
distributed to users is thus nonfree until the nonfree parts are removed. I 
don't see how there could ever be a way of assuring a user's software 
freedom by only mentioning GNU is included because one will always have to 
do more work to know what else is included in the distribution. Even a 
particular distribution that is free today can include nonfree software in 
its repos, so as the FSF's approved distro list criteria says monitoring 
this requires ongoing vigilance and a mindset of fixing freedom problems.