[Fsf-india] DEBATE: Why Linux... why GNU/Linux

Mon, 18 Mar 2002 03:04:47 +0530 (IST)

See the views of Atul Chtinis and RMS below... the first is from Atul's
website. RMS's reply came via an e-mail... Complex but interesting
issues! FN

http://atulchitnis.com/writings/gnulinux.php

Atul Chitnis : Why Linux (and not GNU/Linux)

Many people think that everything GPL'd is GNU software, which is simply not
true. GNU software is *only* that which is listed as part of the GNU
project. A list of all GNU software can easily be seen
<http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html> here.

If you take a standard Linux distribution, and list out all the packages
there, you will find a fair amount of GNU software, agreed.

However, you will find a *MUCH* larger number of packages that are GPL'd,
but which do not appear in the list of GNU projects/software. And this
list of non-GNU software is *far* longer than the GNU content.

Now how does one go about being fair? 

By calling it "GNU/Linux", you are giving credit to GNU, which *is* a part
contributor to the distribution, but by no stretch of imagination the
*only* (or even the largest) one.

To be fair, you would have to name the distribution after *all* the
contributors whose GPL'd (and not necessarily GNU) packages are included.

For example, Apache represents an extremely important reason for people
using free/opensource software. As you can see
<http://www.gnu.org/directory/apache.html> here, it says "This is not a GNU
package". It is not even GPL'd software! Therefore, it is a project in its
own right, and like GNU, should be acknowledged.

So it should be GNU/Apache/Linux.

But what about.....

This, as we can see, quickly becomes impossible.

The term "GPL/Linux" would be more appropriate, because by *any* stretch 
of imagination, GPL'd code exceeds code from GNU projects.

But even that would not be fair - what about the code carrying different
licenses and included in the distribution? Apache, for example, uses the
<http://www.apache.org/LICENSE.txt> Apache Software License, which is GPL
compatible, and Postgres is BSD licensed!

Therefore, the closest "fair" naming convention would be "Free/Linux", but 
even there you run into problems, thanks to the way people try to 
differentiate between "Free Software" and "Open Source Software".

As you can see, there is a very good and practical reason for calling it
"Linux".

While it may seem great in terms of ideology to call it GNU/Linux, it is
simply unfair to the majority of contributors to the distribution to do so.

[The author wishes to thank Gopikrishna Garge (gopi at exocore dot com) for
helping with the development of the argument on which this article is
based.]

*****************************************************

>From rms@gnu.org Mon Mar 18 03:00:33 2002

It was interesting to see your arguments against mentioning "GNU" in
the name of the operating system.  The same arguments apply, but even
more strongly, against including "Linux" in its name.  The kernel,
Linux, is a smaller part of the system than the GNU programs are,
and the GNU programs are just a part of the GNU operating system
which was nearly complete when Linus started writing a kernel.

If those arguments are valid, you shouldn't include either "Linux" or
"GNU" in the system's name.  What, then, would you call it?

>From fred@bytesforall.org Mon Mar 18 03:00:49 2002

RMS's reply to the earlier posted mail... FN