söndagen den 20 juli 2008 skrev Anders Karlsson: > * Björn Persson <listor3.rombobeorn@xxxxxxxxxx> [20080720 19:52]: > [snip: lots of hairsplitting and otherwise ludicrous statements] If my latest response to Thomas Cameron seemed particularly hair-splitting, it may be because he rejected the definition I proposed and yet made more statements that seemed to agree very well with the definition he rejected. I tried to figure out where the difference was and came up with a marginally different definition. If he doesn't agree with that one either, then I definitely don't understand what he means with "Linux". > Is it really so hard to grasp that the term "Linux" can (and does) > mean different things depending on context, who you are talking to, > and the counterparts technical savvy? It's not difficult at all to understand that people have different ideas of what Linux is, but that's not enough to understand what any particular person means when he says "Linux". And why are we even communicating if we aren't going to try to understand each other? > I also would like to know why you have the absolute fascination and > the palpable need to obtain a totally absolute definition of "Linux". I don't think I'll get everyone to agree on a definition. I don't even think all the anti-GNU/Linux folks will agree on a definition. When Mark Haney "vented his spleen" I made an attempt to damp the argument that would inevitably follow. I tried to get Mark to say something about what it was that should or shouldn't be called Linux or GNU/Linux, so that maybe people would at least argue about the same thing. That mostly failed. I kept asking in the hope that at least some people would start thinking about whether their opponents even understood what meaning they put in the words. I expected that some of the anti-GNU/Linux folks would say that Linux is the operating system and that the operating system is the kernel plus the programs that are necessary to boot the system, log in, run commands and edit text files, or something like that. I thought that others would include stuff like Cron, RPM, X and maybe the core parts of a desktop environment. Instead, those who have answered so far or otherwise made their position clear in the argument either say that Linux is a kernel or that pretty much everything and the kitchen sink is Linux. I didn't expect that. I'm particularly surprised that some even include unfree programs that have never been distributed bundled with Linus' kernel. So far I haven't seen a pro-GNU/Linux person describe what GNU/Linux is and what it isn't. It would be interesting to see whether they include the kitchen sink in GNU/Linux. Björn Persson -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
