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

[Ramakrishnan M]

Frederick Noronha wrote:
> See the views of Atul Chtinis and RMS below... the first is from Atul's

First of all, Atul Chitnis is a jerk; the self proclaimed leader of 
"linux" movement in India. People should stop giving too much importance 
to his statements like this.

> 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.

By calling it GNU/Linux or simply "GNU" (which is more appropriate IMHO) 
one gives credit not (only) to the GNU software present in the system, 
but to the *movement* and the ideals behind the movement (which is 
*freedom* for all computer users) which started it all. Linus Tornalds 
used GNU gcc, and GNU make to compile and build the kernel, which 
existed about 5 years or so before his 0.1 version of kernel came out. 
Moreover he is apolitical and doesn't believe in the ideals of freedom 
and cooperation. (Recently he adopted BitKeeper which is a non-free 
software for patch management, and openly says that he prefers in ease 
of use and good tools rather than political ideals). So by calling the 
system "Linux" you are subscribing to the ideals of "Open Source" and 
the philosophy of Linus Torvalds which has nothing to do with Freedom.


> So it should be GNU/Apache/Linux.
> 
> But what about.....

The author says as if he has found out some path breaking new chemical 
element!! These arguments had been chewed over many times in many many 
lists!! So it is not (g)new any more..:-)

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

Linux is a kernel and will always be a kernel..:-)No matter how many 
Chitnis-en use the term Linux to call the Operating system.

> [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.]

I thank Richard Stallman for giving the world the GNU and educating me 
on the greater ideals like Freedom and cooperation.
-- 
Ramakrishnan M    <rkrishnan@debian.org>
GPG keys : Try finger rkrishnan@db.debian.org
WWW : http://people.debian.org/~rkrishnan/