Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

pedrocr.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 139 posts

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#3

Post by fragsworth »

I don't quite think it makes sense to say that all of the software in a Ubuntu distribution should fall under the label of "GNU/Linux". Just because it runs on it doesn't mean it IS that thing.

That said, it is somewhat interesting to see the proportion of software.

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#4

Post by masterzora »

fragsworth wrote: post #3

I don't quite think it makes sense to say that all of the software in a Ubuntu distribution should fall under the label of "GNU/Linux". Just because it runs on it doesn't mean it IS that thing. That said, it is somewhat interesting to see the proportion of software.

I'm not the author or the submitter, but it seems to me that this article is more or less in response to FSF's "We developed most of the central components, forming the largest single contribution to the whole system."[1]

[1] http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#why

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#5

Post by pedrocr »

a3_nm wrote: post #2

Interesting. I would be quite interested what the chart looks like if it is restricted to the packages that are part of the default install.

That should be an easy change. Do you happen to know how where to look up the list of default packages?

I'd assume the percentage of GNU would go down as gcc and gdb are probably not in the default install. The interpretation is a little more dubious though as gcc and gdb are definitely used to produce the software in the default install.

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#7

Post by pedrocr »

masterzora wrote: post #4
fragsworth wrote: post #3

I don't quite think it makes sense to say that all of the software in a Ubuntu distribution should fall under the label of "GNU/Linux". Just because it runs on it doesn't mean it IS that thing. That said, it is somewhat interesting to see the proportion of software.

I'm not the author or the submitter, but it seems to me that this article is more or less in response to FSF's "We developed most of the central components, forming the largest single contribution to the whole system."[1] [1] http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#why

I tried hard to avoid too much of that controversy getting in the way of looking at the data and overshadowing what I thought were more interesting conclusions. But I was of course aware of the naming controversy and it was part of why I had the curiosity to do the analysis in the first place.

Re: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

#9

Post by cookiecaper »

FSF's insistence on "GNU/Linux" has always been childish, but now it's just silly really. For years the proportion of GNU software that actually gets run has been dwarfed by the code from Mozilla, KDE and/or GNOME, and other major desktop software vendors. The GNU/Linux argument has never been persuasive and I'd say it's high time they let it go.
Post reply on HN