11–20 of 139 posts
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.
Lines of code is a poor way to measure contribution.
A kernel is of course useless without userspace. However, almost since its inception the percentage and importance of the GNU contribution has been steadily dwindling; in the course of a normal day, my wife, who is a KDE user, uses much more software provided by KDE e.V. than software provided by GNU/FSF. Should we call all of her Linux installs KDE/Linux?
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
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.
Just makes sure you don't use the command line.
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.
Just makes sure you don't use the command line.
Other than that, how much of my normal CLI usage is attributable to GNU? I'll give screen. What about OpenSSH, Python, htop, pacman, etc.? I use these a lot and they are not from GNU. If I am primarily running Python programs on my Linux box, should I call it Python/Linux since the Python Foundation is the most significant contributor to my userspace experience?
I don't think much has happened with it recently, but they were working to build the kernel with icc (the Intel C compiler).
Anyone that thinks that "GNU" should be dropped from the "GNU/LINUX" should be using alternate cp, rm, ln, etc. Or just use NetBSD (do this anyway).
If the point is supposed to be "why insist on calling it GNU/Linux when xx% of it isn't even produced by GNU?", it's an ill-made point. Most of the userland (and certainly what we could call the "core" userland, especially in terms of development tools) is GNU software. The system would be pretty unusable libc, gcc, ld, make, etc.
Lines of code is a poor way to measure contribution.
The whole argument around the "GNU/Linux" terminology is that the FSF deserved part of the glory because they contributed the userspace to Linux's system code. I think the persistence of those pushing this point of view is a projection of their disappointment over Hurd and demands for subsequent glory "because we deserve it!" This is a really childish stance from the start. A kernel is of course useless without users…