From kragen@dnaco.net Tue Sep 29 20:32:27 1998 Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:32:25 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: "Bradley M. Kuhn" cc: talk@clug.org Subject: Re: RMS wins a round: In-Reply-To: <19980929202311.F30376@ebb.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > That's not what they said. They said: > > "In its earlier days Linux was referred to as GNU" > > That would like me saying: > > "In its earlier days the World-Wide-Web was referred to as the Internet" > > The point I am making is that Linux was never called anything. Linux was > made popular and useful by a project that existed before it, called GNU, but > Linux was never called GNU. Well, the question is, is the OS I'm running on my computer an instance of the GNU operating system running atop the Linux kernel? Because that OS is what almost everyone calls Linux. If that OS *is* an instance of the GNU OS running atop the Linux kernel, it would be accurate to say that before the Linux kernel was written, that OS was called GNU. On the other hand, if this OS is really a totally separate product that just happens to include pieces of the GNU project, then what we call Linux didn't exist before 1991, and therefore it is inaccurate to say that before the Linux kernel was written, this OS was called GNU. Choose your poison, man. Your analogy breaks because nobody says they send mail with the World Wide Web, except those people that use Hotmail or something similar, or the quite clueless. But lots of people talk about how to use Linux, and they don't mean the system call interface, and they are not the clueless -- they are people who build big applications and provide tech support. > Just as the World-Wide-Web was the "last piece of the Internet puzzle", > Linux was the "last piece of the GNU puzzle". However, we don't say that > the World Wide Web was once called the Internet. Thus, we shouldn't say > that Linux was once called GNU! It depends on what you mean by the word "Linux" -- the OS or the kernel. Most people mean the OS. Kragen -- Kragen Sitaker A well designed system must take people into account. . . . It's hard to build a system that provides strong authentication on top of systems that can be penetrated by knowing someone's mother's maiden name. -- Schneier