as per request of the admin, subject changed (please drop the 'was' part in reply)
On Friday 04 June 2010 12:37:00 bhuvanesh kumar wrote: > THAT IS NOT EXACTLY THE REASON FOR THE NAMING BEHIND GNU/Linux. no need to shout! > I suggest > you people to see the film "Revolution OS" , or read some good books on the > history of free software.He wanted to call linux systems GNU/Linux because > linux is only a kernel and is not a complete operating system. A complete > os is a bundle of kernel and userland tools which is developed by GNU > project. Therefore he wants to call these combination GNU/Linux there is > NOTHING WRONG in people taking credit for their own work. Basically he > wanted people to take a look at why they took the pain to develop GNU and > think about the issues affecting software users and strive for freedom. that is all RMS's viewpoint. Why does everyone give so much weight to him and none at all to Linus (who not only wrote and maintained the kernel all these years, but also has come up with another killer app in git - how many people can you point to who have come up with *two* killer apps in a lifetime?). And yet I am still to see one post or person on this list in any way either trying to understand linus's viewpoint or propagate it. Why? Anyway, RMS summarises his views in this article: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html to put it shortly, RMS and company thought of writing a kernel long before linus did - but could not (in fact they have been trying to do so for nearly 30 years now but have utterly failed). Linus wrote it. So GNU people say 'we thought of it first so we want our share of credit'. No problem. But in our world the person who first implements anything gets the main credit and usually gets to name the outcome. Others cannot force a name on it. If Linus had agreed, no one would have any problem. He did not agree. So to foist the name and even refuse to talk to anyone who does not use the name as foisted is the height of childishness and is tantamount to petty jealousy. In the article mentioned above, there is a very amusing paragraph: <quote> If we tried to measure the GNU Project's contribution in this way, what would we conclude? One CD-ROM vendor found that in their “Linux distribution”, GNU software was the largest single contingent, around 28% of the total source code, and this included some of the essential major components without which there could be no system. Linux itself was about 3%. (The proportions in 2008 are similar: in the “main” repository of gNewSense, Linux is 1.5% and GNU packages are 15%.) So if you were going to pick a name for the system based on who wrote the programs in the system, the most appropriate single choice would be “GNU”. </quote> linux is only 1.5%!! might as well remove it (and certainly with only a 1.5% share it has no right to find itself in any part of the name!) But the most important point is that linux and GNU combined are only 16.5% - a small minority. What about giving credit to the people who contributed the remaining 83.5%? why are they ignored? who are they? why are their leaders not crying for credit in the name? one possible reason is that they are not jobless and are busy refining and adding to their contributions ;-) let us look at it from another angle - what would have happened if Linus had not developed the kernel (it is known that he just did it for kicks and not part of the great scheme of freedom framed by RMS). Then GNU would have been useless and we would all still be using windows. ILUGC would not have come into existence - without a kernel GNU tools are of no use (and GNU people have proved that they are incapable of writing a usable kernel). So if anything Linus would be justified in insisting that GNU be called Linux/GNU. And do not forget that it is only because of the success of linux that RMS, GPL and GNU became famous. Without linux no one would have heard of them. No doubt RMS is a visionary - a good thing. We need visions - but if he cannot implement his visions he has no right to grab credit from those who can implement them. Case to point: he was the first to conceive of a free encyclopedia (he called it GNE - GNE is not an encyopedia). It was a failure - Wales implemented the wikipedia which was a success. No doubt RMS would have like to call it the GNE/wikipedia - but it won't work because it is an URL and if you type GNE/Wikipedia in the address bar you will not get wikipedia. He also had visions of a DVCS - but GNU Arch was another flop - whereas linus quietly produced git without any fanfare. We owe a tremendous debt to Linus - and it is fitting that the OS is named after him (he did not name it). We also owe something to RMS and his friends - there are lots of things named after GNU - more than enough to keep any reasonable person happy. But this kind of renaming is not reasonable. I request those of us here who have benefited from the work of Linus Torwalds to take some time out and also find out his views on the matter and respect them. Or if you really want to further the cause of GNU, please make hurd usable and use arch for version control. -- regards kg http://livejournal.com/lawgon _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
