RMS Turns 50 527
gnuhead writes "RMS is turning 50 on the 16th, according to this post in the FSF India mailing list. Some of the members have decided to give a birthday gift to RMS by celebrating March 16th to April 15th as 'GNU/Linux' month, and having a 'It's GNU/Linux dammit!' email sig. for this month. Happy birthday RMS!!!"
Had to say it.. (Score:5, Funny)
(Sorry)
Re:Had to say it.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Had to say it.. (Score:5, Funny)
.
.
.
youlooklikeamonkeyandsmelllikeonetoo.
*SMACK*
Doh.
Re:Had to say it.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So happy birthday RMS. May age mellow your demeanour.
Re:Had to say it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh dear god... (Score:4, Funny)
Now.. (Score:5, Funny)
Happy GNU/Birthday you smelly hippie.
Re:Now.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that meant to be an insult?
How very like rms (Score:5, Interesting)
To take even the occaision of his birthday as something political.
I guess it's his party and all :-)
it's my party (Score:3, Funny)
and I'll politic if I want to
politic if I want to...
Happy Birthday! (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry that's GNU/RMS 5.0 of course...
Re:Happy Birthday! (Score:4, Funny)
Google to become Gnuugle? (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot to become GNUSlashdot?
Happy Birthday RMS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Happy Birthday RMS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Happy Birthday RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
Dunno how he calls himself an atheist on stallman.org. Clearly worships his ideas...
GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, while the FSF made many valuable contributions to the Linux "movement" as it were, seeking to rename Linux is at best presumptuous.
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:2)
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:3, Insightful)
You paid them for the lumber etc, it is yours. Plus lumber isn't copyrighted, its freaking dead tree thats been chopped up.
The GNU utils are copyrighted and dristributed by GNU for free.
Still, plenty of people buy stuff and advertise the manufacturer/maker. Almost everything you buy has the manufacturers logo permanently emblazoned on it. I'm looking around and my computer, my calculator, my speakers, phone, watch, wallet, mugs, mp3 player, books cds, movies, etc,etc,etc all have manufacture
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:3, Informative)
Personally I feel the phrase "GNU/Linux" is unwieldy and unnecessary. As others have pointed out, GNU/Linux/Xfree/etc. is probably a better way
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, you misunderstand what they refer to when they say "GNU/Linux". They aren't referring to the kernel itself. If they felt that the kernel (Linux itself) was FSF software, they'd just call it "GNU"
Huge portions of a standard Linux distribution are GNU software, and they're arguably some of the most important parts (the compiler, the system libraries). When they say "you should call -it- GNU/Linux", they aren't referring to the kernel. They're refferring to the kernel *and* the rest of the system, of which the kernel is a relatively small part. The "GNU" in "GNU/Linux" refers to the GNU software that the distribution is built on, not the kernel. That's what the "Linux" part in "GNU/Linux" refers to.
All clear I hope
That's exactly why it should be called... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not GNU/Linux because Linux is independent of GNU.
So when saying I use Linux you're refering to the use of the Linux kernel as the base of your system.
When you say you're using Red Hat Linux you are refering to a specific Distribution that uses Linux and GNU Tools and is packaged by a third party for easy install, technical support and donation of expertise to the Linux/GNU communities.
I guess I dont see the need to append GNU because I don't frequently see people say I'm using Fre
Re:That's exactly why it should be called... (Score:2, Insightful)
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD all heavily use GNU software and have gcc as the official compiler. Just remember, no compiler means no software in binary form. You will realize the importance of GNU only when you exist in a world devoid of GNU-made software and GNU-licensed (GPL) software.
depends on what you mean by GPL free (Score:2)
Someone should start a BSD C/C++ compiler project (Score:3, Insightful)
not a C/C++ compiler (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Someone should start a BSD C/C++ compiler proje (Score:4, Informative)
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:4, Funny)
But GNU's Not UNIX!!!!!
Sorry, had to say it
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:3, Informative)
If I interpret the license correctly, code generated by gcc is not considered a derivative work of it. A derivative work would only be generated by modifying the source code of the compiler itself. The way I read it, the GNU license doesn't reserve naming rights either, no matter whether a work is derivative or not.
GNU deserves lots of credit, but they should stand by their license, and respect it. They freely made the decis
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:2, Insightful)
He also writes parts of GCC. The GNU C Compiler is not a trivial thing to write. I use it from time to time.
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if "invention" is the right word to use; I would tend to say "Stallman's most clever hack ever was a hack on legal code, not computer code" and I'm not even sure if that's accurate. But I do agree with the spirit of your post: the GPL has done wonders for the freedom of computer users.
I just got back home after attending the FSF Associate Membership meeting at MIT yesterday. Eben Moglen mentioned in his presentation that he has never once had to go to court to defend GPL'ed software. The thing that had most of us chuckling throughout his presentation was what he attributed this success to: TACT!
RMS is certainly eccentric, but history is full of eccentric leaders and I believe that history will be kind to this one.
Happy Birthday, RMS!
--K.
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I guess IBM dropping USD $1Billion on Linux is a means of protest against the GPL, right?
Riiiiiiight.
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:5, Interesting)
So much is GNU however (Score:2)
All the *nixes rely on gnu tools (gcc, tcsh, emacs, etc) for a great degree of their operation. So why does RMS obsess over linux and not everything else?
Re:So much is GNU however (Score:2)
For example, Solaris comes with a Companion CD containing lots of Free Software.
Actually, the Solaris example is a good one - the kernel is SunOS, the whole operating system is Solaris. So SunOS <==> Linux, Solaris <==> GNU/Linux
Not at all (Score:2, Insightful)
But besides, the software industry is quite unlike the contruction industry (ever try to burn a house onto a CD and give it to a friend?), so the whole analogy is flawed. Put it this way: the GNU project started about 1985 (86? 84? sometime around then), whil
GNU/Linux fah how bout RedHat. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:5, Interesting)
People who have no awareness of 'freeness' of software or the issues involved perhaps will be curious and try to find out more about this mysterious acronym. This is precisely what happened to me after running 'Linux' before I knew anything about GNU. I have since myself spread information about Free software to many others.
I think the "Stallman wants to 0wn Linux!!!" line is childish and petty. Why not see it for what it is - an advertisement for open and enlightened attitudes. Call it GNU/Linux 'mommy's testicles' if you want, but don't hold it against the man for seeking some (deserved) recognition - not even for himself directly - but for his positive ideology.
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:2)
After all, you don't call it "the gcc operating system", do you, or "vios" even though every distribution comes with gcc, vi, mozilla, etc?
OK, the Linux kernel is rather an important bit, and Linus be praised for making the bit that pushed it into being a real OS, but to my mind the most interesting technical aspect of "GNU/Linux" is it's mad modularity. You could build two different "GNUOS" machine
So we short-shrift MIT, BSD & the rest? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why *don't* we call it ``GNU/MIT/BSD/Apache/Perl/Python/Linux"?
Or what about the fact most computers with Solaris also have various GNU utilities installed. Most of the time, the same ones that come with a Linux distribution? Why don't we call it ``GNU/Solaris". heck, it would make troubleshooting problems with a Solaris box far easier.
RMS was presented with these very same questions a few months ago on LWN, & like a broken computer program, all he could say was ``It's not the same thing" & talk around the question. He wants to talk about ``GNU/Linux". Anything else involving a program where the code was freely available matters doesn't matter to him.
As I see it, someone took RMS's idea of free software & extended it. Made the software even more free. And RMS is having problems getting his head around that fact. Too bad for him; I'm still going to call it Linux.
Geoff
Re:GNU/Linux, fah! (Score:4, Insightful)
RMS is actually the paragon of why Free Software, despite its best attempts, will never excel without the input of the "marketing" types that GNU-ites go out of their way to denigrate.
I say this as a open-source advocate whose day job is as a marketing/PR professional, so I have at least a fair idea of what I'm talking about.
GNU, to use the previous analogy, was a group that saw a great (but commercially restricted) house nearby (AT&T UNIX). They started to build two houses - one from the roof down (the GNU tools) and another (GNU HURD) from the ground up. While the top-down project went well, the ground-up project suffered from typical GNU committee-think and organizational "analysis paralysis," as it is typically called in management study texts.
Seeing another ground-up house being built (Linux), they generously added their housetop onto this new foundation. But, despite the fact that - given enough time - the new house would have built its own top, they then looked at the success of the new house and claimed half (or MORE than half) ownership.
Casting this presumptuousness aside, let's look at what GNU would gain if people did actually start calling Linux "GNU/Linux." From a marketing perspective, they would now have their acronym in front of a larger audience - so they could do what? Maybe users would give the same amount of cash they gave for every free Linux download (none) to GNU? Maybe industry media would choose to ask RMS about Linux's new enterprise capabilities instead of Linus or Alan Cox? What good would this do, aside from giving RMS a platform to talk (often irrelevantly) about his (if admirable) "extremist" software agenda when what users really wanted to know about was whether the next Linux kernel would have (insert important feature to them)?
While as a marketing person I understand the value of brand recognition, I still don't understand the practical value of alienating many Linux users through the forced insistence of a GNU name, when the end goal isSpeaking as a (oh-so-hated-by-Slashdoteers) marketing professional, I have to question whether GNU's active disdain for marketing types is really getting it anywhere, when if they actually embraced a marketer somewhere in their cabal, they might have produced a less extremist spokesman than RMS and actually advanced their cause. An actual competent marketer might have advised them to drop the "GNU/Everything" crap and take a more cooperative approach with all the Linux (and even BSD [including Apple] distributions) to promote their general ideas as the expense of controversial personalities like RMS.
But maybe promoting RMS is what GNU is all about ... I don't know, but if they broadened their camp to include marketing-types, GNOME wouldn't have such an awful user interface and the GNU program would be getting somewhere in the mainstream/technical press...
Happy Birthday, Richard! (Score:4, Insightful)
Although in the long-term, it would be nice if we could trust companies enough to use BSD-based licenses, right now we can't trust big business farther than we can throw them.
As a result, a strong and uncompromising stance is the only thing that will protect Free software. And that is the stance you have taken.
May you see the day when business and Free software are no longer seen as mutually exclusive.
Re:Happy Birthday, Richard! (Score:5, Insightful)
Things would be very different today, right now, if the GPL didn't exist, or if it had been allowed to be watered down by a series of little compromises.
how about... (Score:5, Funny)
Anyways, how about for his birthday, we try to get HURD done sometime before the guy dies? Huh?
Maybe we can actually add the whole 4 extra characters and call it GNU/Linux instead of just Linux. Btw, RMS, I'm going to pronounce it G N U Linux, not Geenoo Linux, which sounds wierd. Sorry bout that one. Since GNU stands for GNU's not Linux, I prefer to speak it like I speak many other 3-letter abbreviations which don't sound good when spoken out phonetically: as letters (DOS is an exception).
Re:how about... (Score:5, Funny)
You're kidding, right? He's looked like 50 for 25 years at least.
Anyways, how about for his birthday, we try to get HURD done sometime before the guy dies? Huh?
After you, Sir.
Btw, RMS, I'm going to pronounce it G N U Linux, not Geenoo Linux, which sounds wierd.
How about making it Gentoo Linux [gentoo.org] instead? I can't recall anybody starting a flamewar about that.
Re:how about... (Score:2)
Re:how about... (Score:2)
Who cares about decimal? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who cares about decimal? (Score:5, Funny)
"Now 64th birthday, that might be interesting. But 50 has few interesting properties besides being half of 10^2."
64? Damn, I didn't realize he was that old, it's a wonder he's alive... It feels like he was 31 just yesterday!
Re:Who cares about decimal? (Score:2)
(10^2)/2=((5*2)^2)/2=((5^2)*(2^2))/2=(5^2)*2=2*
As an exercise, prove the following statement in hexadecimal arithmetic:
A^2/2=5^2*2
Observe standard algebraic order of operations.
+1, Math geeky.
Gosh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It was late at night and I had typed 'rm gcc-1.17' instead of 'cd gcc-1.17'..
Of course nothing happened, but a friend watched me do it and we both freaked out.
Where would we be now if I had deleted RMS's gcc master!
Need I say how incredibly cool he is to have shared his account with so many needy folks back in the day..
Re:Gosh.. (Score:4, Funny)
i thinks its fair to say you probably wouldn't have been alive to post this.
Re:Gosh.. (Score:5, Funny)
Thank god that cd doesn't have a recursive switch.
Re:Gosh.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, of course, people who don't password protect their accounts with totally obscure number/letter/symbol sequences are ostracized.
That's gotta bug Richard at least a little.
Re:Gosh.. (Score:3, Informative)
For a few insights into this rebellion against control, read Free as in Freedom [oreilly.com] and Why GNU su does not support the wheel group [gnu.org].
Record Breaking News (Score:5, Funny)
wait a second.... (Score:2, Funny)
We should all chip in (Score:5, Funny)
why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We should all chip in (Score:2)
(not "GNU/Linux")
But his biography says his b-day is the 18th (Score:5, Informative)
Taken from the Free as in Freedom, which you can read here [oreilly.com].
I remembered this because I thought I shared a birthday with RMS. Perhaps I was wrong after all.
Re:But his biography says his b-day is the 18th (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But his biography says his b-day is the 18th (Score:3, Informative)
Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month? (Score:5, Insightful)
- no Free Software Foundation. no GNU! at all!
- no Emacs
- no GCC
- no GDB
- no GNU/Make
Very likely there would be no Linux and no *free* BSD either. We would be using SCO and BSDI!
I don't care about the GNU/blabla name myself but his contribution, both technical and philosophical, is simply enormous. In years to come people will compare who in the early years of the personal computer made the most impact, between Bill Gates and RMS. For now the jury is still out, but I know which one I respect most and whose software I use!
Happy birthay RMS, many return! -- and thanks for not letting compromise dilute your message. May the hordes understand you some day.
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally somebody who realizes that even if you don't care for RMS personally, Open Source may not even be here today without him. The whole unwashed slashdot mob really makes me angry sometimes. RMS has made more contributions to the whole Open Source movement, both in code, money, time, pholsophy and conviction than perhaps anybody else on the planet. If you don't like him, fine, but please respect what he has done.
On the other hand reading the comments, I can't help but think that most people who have posted are 5th grade class clowns that don't understand anything that happens in the world other than what day they get their allowance.
"Happy birthay RMS, many return! -- and thanks for not letting compromise dilute your message. May the hordes understand you some day." - I couldn't agree more. Cheers!
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month? (Score:4, Informative)
RMS has made more contributions to the whole Open Source movement...
Actually, I rather suspect that RMS would say his contributions were made to the Free Software movement.
I agree with your sentiment: that we all owe RMS a great deal of respect. But part of that respect could include having a basic understanding of his movement and philosophies, even if we prefer competing, though related, ones.
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine no GNU/Emacs
I wonder if you can
No need for more ram
A brotherhood if vi
Imagine all the people
Editing with Vim
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month? (Score:2)
--no Emacs
You promise?
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's look at one of these events: GCC. RMS did not start out writing GCC because there were no free compilers. There were. But he rejected them because of technical issue
yeah they are based on GNU tools (Score:2)
Re:Why not the FSF/Emacs/GCC/GDB month? (Score:4, Insightful)
No one is above criticism, not all of what RMS did is right. Not even him would go that far I'm sure. Note however that the GNU/Linux issue is not unambiguously wrong, merely controversial (you will find a lot of people who support his views). It's not as if he'd killed somebody with his views.
However it's today is his birthday. This is not a dark day for Free Software, on the contrary. If from time to time people realise what others have done and acknowledge them, it often gets easier to understand one another.
The benefits of the GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to RMS for charting a solution through the horrors of software patents and such.
St. Patrick's Day (Score:3, Funny)
Re:St. Patrick's Day (Score:4, Funny)
There was a young man named Stallman
whose political views some find apallin'
he wrote some free code
and on his coattails more rode
now there's tons of free software for all men!
*ducks*
Does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
My first RMS memory (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't get it at the time. From my point of view, all software was free, and its normal mode of distribution was as source listings in magazines.
It was more than a decade later when I realized he must have been talking about RMS. And now I get the point, too. It's been ages since I saw a source listing in a magazine. Without free software, the next generation of hackers would have had nothing to tinker with.
Re:My first RMS memory (Score:4, Interesting)
License on Gifts (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe I should have gone for the LGPLed version, where you don't have to share, but you have to tell everyone everything they need to make one just like it.
Goddamn GNU/Linux people (Score:2)
The GNU utilities aren't as important as you make them out to be in order to have a working Linux system. The last time the GNU/Linux people came out of the woodwork, I began a bit of a project to see how easy it is to compile the BSD toolchain to run under Linux. Guess what, it's not that hard at all. So you keep it up, I may have to fini
Re:Goddamn GNU/Linux people (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting idea, but... (Score:2)
Don't you mean INTEL/Linux?
Yeah sure... (Score:2)
Just kiddin', happy birthday RMS !
Here's an idea! (Score:2)
Hello?
Only fifty? Wow... (Score:2)
It's <distro>/Linux, dammit! (Score:4, Insightful)
An important part of the software in a typical distro comes from the FSF, for which the FSF deserves considerable credit. But any distro has software from very many other sources; enough so that the FSF does not deserve so much credit as to get to choose the name.
Note that expressions like "Redhat Linux" or "SuSE Linux" really are common parlance, and these names communicate useful information. If I tell you I have SuSE Linux, then you can surmise that I have the YaST installer, a certain kind of layout under
Really now, did the folks at FSF India really mean to do RMS a favor? There are certainly many things for which RMS could be honored, and deservedly so. Why did they have to pick out the most controversial, tendentious and dubious of all of his pursuits? Frankly, I can imagine anything worse they could have done for him.
There is no "GNU/Linux", nor is there a "GNU/Hurd" or a GNU/anything else, because the FSF has failed to produce anything that might be called the GNU operating system. The FSF has produced a lot of outstanding software, but a GNU OS does not exist. Maybe someday, but not now. They have nothing comparable to the distro CDs from which an OS named "GNU" can be installed, in fact no installer that I know of, no support organization, nor anything else comparable to the value that organizations like Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake and the rest provide. And of course, there is no Hurd kernel. The FSF has been remarkably successful at many, many things, and I admire them greatly for it. But the effort to create an operating system called "GNU" has been a failure.
Thus to insist on calling something "GNU/Linux" is a kind of intellectual dishonesty that, to my mind, comes uncomfortably close to plagiarism. It is an attempt to get credit for other people's work.
Happy birthday to RMS, and congratulations for the many fine things he has accomplished in 50 years.
But an OS called GNU is not among those accomplishments, and the obsession with the name "GNU/Linux" is something for which no one deserves any praise.
Political Statements (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think even RMS would disagree with this.
The FSF is very political, because they're fighting a idealogical war.
On the one hand we have dictators like Microsoft that put a tax on any computer Joe Average buys and strips their natural rights away through EULA's. On the other hand we have the FSF beating the drum for the GPL and software that guarantees the user's rights.
I personally don't go around saying GNU/Linux, mainly because it's a mouthful, but I do understand why the GNU/Linux people preach it: they're trying to increase mindshare about free software.
And Linux wouldn't exist without free software.
Happy 50th Anniversary of RMS Release 1.0 (Score:4, Funny)
The best present you can give, to him and yoursel (Score:5, Interesting)
For Emacs alone, we all owe him.
GNU/Linux, XEmacs and clibs (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrast this with the attitude of the Lucent towards their fork of emacs. They had tried very hard to work out compromises. While they were unable to reunite enough so that package managers could write for one platform the XEmacs team never failed to recognize XEmacs as a product born of Emacs.
RMS felt that the primary problem was the distinctive name. XEmacs users couldn't help but see their work as derived from Emacs because of the name while it was very easy for Linux users to fail to understand the dependencies on GNU products. How things like Binutils were vital to creating a GPL kernel, and at the same time had been boring tedious unfun work for the FSF. Just ask yourself the simple question if XEmacs had been called Xlispedit might Xlispedit users have neccesarily seen the connection between their editor and the FSF's?
RMS got a little heavy handed with Debian over the Linux GNU/Linux issue and this among other issues resulted in Debian becoming independent of the FSF. Now consider that RMS followed this up with two more battles:
a) The battle against KDE
b) The battle against the term "open source"
and you can see how he's made enemies.
The fact is that:
a) Linux is part of the GNU project
b) A large number of Linux users do not know this
b2) A time when a lot of Linux users learn about this is during discussion of Linux vs. GNU/Linux
c) An even larger number of Linux users do not understand the philosophy and motivation of the GNU project (though a pretty high percentage think they do)
d) RMS's battle against QT resulted in huge improvements to QT/C++. Today QT could play the same role for C++ that the C-standard library does for C. That can't help but benefit KDE over the long haul. The treatment was very painful and the results are highly positive.
e) Everything RMS said would happen regarding the term "open source" has happened.
Anyway happy birthday RMS. I hope the next 10 years are as succesful as these 10. Winning battles can take a great out of you.
Happy b-day, Richard! (Score:5, Interesting)
To see things in the seed, that is genius.
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. You can quote them. Disagree with them. Glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Happy b-day, Richard!
Believe it or not, every time I fire up my GNU/Linux boxen, I think to myself, "Damn, I SO appreciate the mofos before me who created this stuff."
my favorite RMS story (Score:4, Interesting)
Around '82 I was a staff member at UCB. RMS was visiting Fateman (a prof at UCB) for the summer and was sharing the shared office with me and a bunch of grad students. I had heard a little about RMS, but I wasn't really prepared for the real thing.
First off, when I introduced myself and extended my hand, well, you know, he just shook his hands in the air at me. Then, as I was talking he took out a wood flute and started playing and dancing. He would stop playing only to ask questions or make comments.
Then, once we had been talking for a little bit, he told me about the evil people at Symbolics that sold software that had been written at MIT. He said they were no better than "thieves and arsonists". The "arsonists" bit was so funny that I started to laugh. He got really upset and started yelling at me. Problem is, I thought he was joking and I just laughed harder.
OK, 2 stories:
Fateman invited RMS over to dinner at his house. Just before the appointed time RMS shows up with a box of pastries. He asks for plate and puts the pastries on it. Fateman's two daughters (early teens) are like "cool, pastries for desert!!" However, as dinner started the real purpose of the pastries was revealed: they were his dinner and he was not going to share.
Re:a typo? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:50? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who Cares? (Score:2)
It's not important, but then what news on Slashdot ever is?
Re:not gnu (Score:2, Informative)
Re:not gnu (Score:2, Informative)
Little progress? If you're running linux, chances are a huge proportion of the software on your system is GNU or derived from GNU software. Torvalds wrote a kernel and surrounded it with a GNU system.
Re:not gnu (Score:5, Informative)
How much of your favorite distribution is from FSF/GNU? He devised the GPL without which Linux wouldn't be where it is today. He doesn't ask people to use the term GNU\Linux out of ego, but to remind them about the ideals of Free Software. Read this book and give it some thought: Free as in Freedom [amazon.com]
Re:not gnu (Score:4, Interesting)
Before saying something, I have to say that I am a Linus, RMS and Eric fan --believe it or not-- inspite of all the radically different viewpoints each of the three has. So don't think that I am supporting any one group.
Here are a few points that I would like to clarify:
Okey, I agree I am being a toady and humbug, but hey, I am not as smart as you guys --show some pity on your inferior.
Thank you.
Grim Reality
2003-03-17 00:09:24 UTC (2003-03-16 19:09:24 EST)
Free Software, not Open Source (Score:4, Informative)