-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 17 January 2003 12:51, Ely Levy wrote: > this argument might had some point a while ago but today ? > why should it be named gnu/linux and not kde/linux? > I agree that GNU people did usefull stuff but so did kde/qt people > and so did X11 people by giving credit to one group we inslult another. > yea gnu did gcc and few other untilities and so did other groups > so who would you give credit to first?
I'm not a member of the JLC (for geographical reasons :-), but would like to express my opinion. I can't say what Amichai's intentions are; the following is what _I_ would read into a gnu/linux rename. IMO Ely's argument above isn't wrong, but it is misapplied. The gnu/linux naming issue is not simply about giving credit anymore, with all the publicty it gets (more than many other issues rms uses to talk about). It's about declaring for rms's free software philosophy, as opposed to linus's 'use what works' approach. (And people who think of themselves as 'neutral' usually find themselves in the 2nd category.) This is an ideological and political statement, really. If it was just about giving credit, people wouldn't IMHO react so strongly to this suggestion. When someone calls his system 'redhat' or 'mandrake' instead of 'redhat linux' noone really minds it, although the distributor/packager arguably deserve less credit than Linus, rms, or the kde developers. On kde mailing lists developers talk of 'kde systems' (not even qt/kde). Even with debian who insist on being completely free and calling their distro gnu/linux, I don't think (?) there's a problem with shortening the name to 'debian' casually. The 'kde and x11 deserve credit too' argument is valid in those situations. But say 'a linux system' in front of rms or one of his disciples and he'll cut you short with an explanation about why gnu/linux is the proper thing to say. rms doesn't care about credit that much more than any other free software developer. The gnu/linux issue is about recognition and support of the gnu's philosophy and policy. It's also about educating the masses, now that there are linux 'masses' of a sort, about the gnu and the free software philosophy, which is important because their fight for freedom is going on, and it's our fight, too. (Mandatory usage of ms software in various places, things like the dmca, the riaa, the decss case, ....). By naming something gnu/linux you're not insulting anyone, beacuse you are not making the statement that the gnu utilities and the linux kernel are the only parts of your system that matter. Rather, you are making the statement that you use all that free software on your machine not just because it's what gets the job done, but because its freedom has an intrinsical value to you. If Amichai means to 'give credit' to the gnu developers then I'd agree that renaming the lug is probably the wrong way to go about it. But I hope he meant something more like what I describe :-) Well, that's my personal opinion, for what it's worth... - -- Dan Armak Matan, Israel Public GPG key: http://www.gentoo.org/~danarmak/danarmak-gpg-public.key -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+J+vrUI2RQ41fiVERAi+JAJ97VtlU488SEnSHEIEreWfapZK3+QCfTdRT aqjRwUj8oCNVO4i6KU9vdXo= =4D/O -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
