[Pan-users] Re: clearing headers?

[Yavor Doganov]

В Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:17:13 +1000, Steven D'Aprano написа:

> I have read it. I think its sad that you assume that just because I
> don't agree with the GNU opinion that implies I don't know what the GNU
> arguments are.

No, not really.  I assume that everyone who is familiar with the history 
of the free software movement would immediately figure out who is the 
principal developer of the system.

> "The GNU Emacs Church (Bulgarian eparchy)"

Heh, that's a humurous header, again with deep historical background.  It 
is not supposed to be anything serious.  The GNU Emacs Church has no 
gods, and I'm personally an atheist.

> How can it be the same system if it is running a different kernel? Are
> you saying that there is no difference between the Linux kernel and the
> FreeBSD kernel?

It is a different system, but all those packages work with kFreeBSD, with 
no source changes (mostly).  So how can you call the system "Linux" when 
the system works with a different kernel?  Try to remove all the GNU 
software, and see what happens.

(Perhaps embedded systems that use Linux+uClibc+busybox, etc. with no 
essential GNU components could be called Linux systems -- I don't have a 
strong opinion on that, as I'm not aware of the technical details.)

> Likewise for Linux: it gets its name from the creator

Linus Torvalds is the main author of the kernel -- a major component of 
the system.  The first release as free software was in 1992, and the 
development of the GNU system started in 1983.  In 1992, almost all other 
components were basically ready.  So it is drastically unfair to name the 
whole system after the name of the last component.  If the GNU project 
did not have a strategy to systematically develop replacements of all the 
other essential proprietary components, the history would be (perhaps) 
different.

But there are other, non-technical reasons to say "GNU/Linux", and over 
the years I've figured out that the most vocal opponents of the name are 
people who are shy to make associations with GNU, mostly because they 
avoid talking about software freedom.