Thomas Cameron wrote:
I've never denigrated or minimized GNU's participation in the success of
the Linux operating system, or any other operating systems. No doubt,
the GNU bits are of critical import. But that's not why I commented on
this thread.
My point is that GNU is only a *part* of that success.
Or Linux is only a *part* of the success of GNU as an operating system.
Bear in mind that GNU was a "big and professional" Free Software
operating system before Linus even began work on what would become the
Linux kernel.
There are other
projects which have been as or more important in that success. Look at
Apache and Sendmail and BIND. By your logic, it could very well be
argued that it should be called Sendmail/Linux or Apache/Linux or
BIND/Linux, as using Linux servers for mail and web DNS services was the
bread and butter for Linux for a lot of years.
If you sold a black box that ran Sendmail on a GNU operating system, and
called it "The Sendmail box", I wouldn't tell you that your name was
wrong. However, if I asked you what the *operating system* in your
black box was, I'd expect you to say that it was GNU. Sendmail isn't
running on top of Linux; it's running on a GNU operating system with
Linux as its kernel.
Those are the services
which got Linux in the back door in the enterprise. I'm the first one
to admit that without the GNU c compiler and c libraries, those would
not have been as easily done, but *all* of them came together for the
success of what the vast majority of the community and the industry
calls "Linux."
It was certainly beneficial that GNU could run applications written for
POSIX systems, but that doesn't make them part of the operating system.
I don't think that anyone is trying to make any argument other than:
the operating system was GNU before it used the Linux kernel, and
remained so when that one component was used. Whatever name we use to
refer to a software distribution aside, the name of the operating system
that they include is GNU. Calling it GNU/Linux isn't even so much about
attribution of credit to Linux as it is a clarification that the primary
GNU kernel is not included.
--
fedora-list mailing list
fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
