On Jul 20, 2008, Thomas Cameron <thomas.cameron@camerontech.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 02:00 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> Apache, sendmail, bind and linux are not operating systems. They have
>> never been.

> I've never said they were.

You proposed and rejected the idea of referring to the operating
system as Apache/Linux, sendmail/Linux, etc, as a means to counter
GNU/Linux, as if GNU was parallel to Apache or sendmail in this
picture.

> They are part of a DISTRIBUTION.

But are they major, essential components of a distribution? Do they
make up for a larger contribution to the operating system than any
other component present in it?

> I am talking about what most folks call "Linux," a Linux
> distribution.

If you start out by assuming that Linux means that, then any proof
you'll come back to will be the result of circular logic, thus
meaningless.

> I am about getting Free and Open Source Software adopted in the
> mainstream, and thereby growing the community. As far as I'm
> concerned, I am working towards increasing freedom.

See, that's a key difference. Increasing is not the same as
achieving. Increasing by sacrificing the last mile, so it becomes
unachievable and may eventually be eroded back is fundamentally
incompatible with the ultimate goal of the Free Software movement.

> that you will apparently accept no pragmatism.

Pragmatism only makes sense within a set of values and goals, taking
into account what you're willing to sacrifice to achieve the goals.

Some people think it's ok to sacrifice freedom one bit at a time while
hand-waving about getting a critical mass of people who tolerate loss
of freedom and then somehow getting them to start demanding freedom
without having ever heard about it.

That kind of wishful thinking doesn't even begin to make sense to me.
I wouldn't call it pragmatic, I'd call it self-defeating, at least as
far as my set of values and goals is concerned.

>> And where would have Linux been if it wasn't running under the GNU
>> operating system?

> /me rolls his eyes. I've already conceded that point. Why are you
> arguing in circles?

Because you still regard it as asinine rather than just fair.

> And Linux (as in a typical Linux distro) uses far more of other
> projects' code than it uses of GNU.

Linux is a kernel. Let's please avoid the circular logic.

It doesn't matter what other projects go into a GNU+Linux distro.
That there are other large projects, maybe even larger than GNU,
doesn't justify calling it Linux and omitting GNU, because Linux is
less relevant than GNU in this whole.

> Therefore, to my original point (which you are ignoring), it makes
> no sense to call a Linux distro "GNU/Linux."

I agree. It would make more sense to call it KDE/GNU, for example.
Or OOo/GNU. Linux just doesn't fit. And that's *exactly* the point.

Now, I don't ask people to refrain from naming Linux. I just ask
that, out of fairness, GNU *also* be named when the Linux term is
abused to refer to the operating system or the distribution, because
GNU is more relevant than Linux in these contexts.

>> > *all* of them came together for the success of what the vast
>> > majority of the community and the industry calls "Linux."

> I'm talking about the call for Linux to be called GNU/Linux.

Where you perceive "success" and "glory", what I see is "still a long
way to go". That's what I'm responding to. And refraining from
promoting the software freedom philosophy will not help advance it.
So, if you do want to help advance the cause, if you feel aligned with
it, pretty please help spread awareness about the philosophy, because
it's far more important than the actual software. And that's what the
request for people to refer to GNU/Linux rather than just Linux is
about.

>> The people who most strongly oppose this correction are precisely
>> those who stole the "glory" of GNU's success.

> Um, hold on a sec, there. "Stole?" To steal typically means to have
> the intent to deprive another of property.

Not necessarily property, but yes, unfortunately that's precisely what
happened. Remember the lignux/malignux fiasco? Remember the
reactions brought up by those who fiercely opposed the FSF and its
attempt to "steal Linux's merit"? Those people seem to be it's ok for
them to rename someone else's work, but then that it's highly
objectionable, even malignant, for someone else to rightfully rename
it back.

> I've been using Linux since 1995, and I've never, ever seen anyone
> in the Linux community indicate that they intended to deprive GNU of
> any property or even credit for all they've done.

Maybe you haven't been around long enough, or haven't taken part in
these debates with the kind of people I'm talking about.

> That the Linux kernel was what accelerated F/OSS popularity was
> happenstance mixed with cool code.

Sure, Linux was the piece that was missing for a complete Free
operating system. No doubt it was earth-shattering: the other pieces
were in place already. And, see, I'm not trying to diminish the merit
of Linus et al, it's quite laudable that Linus decided to relicense
Linux under a Free Software license back in 1992. I'm just putting it
in perspective. As Newton said, he only saw as far as he did because
he was on the shoulders of giants.

I guess it can be summed up as credit where credit is honestly due, if
promoting freedom is not enough of a moral imperative for you to name
GNU. It's not just a rose, the philosophy that matters is tied to
that particular name.

> That the general public saw Linux distributions rise up in
> popularity and they chose to call them "Linux" instead of
> "GNU/Linux" is not theft, it's just the way things shook out.

You seem to assume there was no intent to push GNU to a back seat.
You haven't been around long enough.

> Accusations of theft are pretty serious. I don't buy it at all.

That's fine, I'm not charging for it :-)

>> But that's not the case. The case at hand is that by rejecting the
>> idea of mentioning GNU, a very different set of values is promoted.
>> And this set of values denigrates our movement, works against our
>> movement, and makes our task, that was already difficult, even more
>> difficult. Pretending it doesn't, waving it off as childish, that's
>> what's ridiculous. And offensive. And disrespectful. Please don't
>> do that.

> Ah, OK, I get it now. Yours is the One True Way, and everyone else is
> heretical.

Heh. Yeah. "Good" argument.

I'm not demanding you to agree with our goals or join our movement.
*You* claimed you were part of it. But still, you don't seem to care
enough about promoting its core values. Something is clearly amiss.

You obviously don't have to do as I ask. That's what makes it a
request rather than a demand. But in case you do care about promoting
the values you say you want to promote, then please believe me, using
a name that helps you do that helps.

> Extremism in any form is bad.

Moderation is good for temper, not for virtue.

Consider that motto of that famous Internet company, "do no harm".

How would that sound if it were "moderated" to "do little harm", or
"do no more harm than reasoanble"? :-)

> You're being extremist here, sorry, no other way to call it.

No need to be sorry. I happily regard myself as a Free Radical. I
don't have any problem whatsoever with that.

> Wow - talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Don't you work for Red
> Hat, a company best known for... Linux?

Yeah, well. I was hired by Cygnus, a company best known for making
Free Software affordable. I still work on developing exclusively that
kind of Free Software. Why should I not take Red Hat pay for
something I enjoy doing and that is fully compatible with my personal
values? If I chose to work at another place, doing the same thing,
Red Hat would still get the benefit of the work in just the same way,
so what would the point be of quitting?


Now, you make it seem like Red Hat is doing me a favor for letting me
work on software it wants to offer its customers, for letting me solve
problems its customers run into. That's quite a twisted view of the
world. Ever wondered why salary and benefits are called compensation?
You honesty believe Red Hat is getting less from this business
relationship than I am?

And, FTR, I don't have any gripes whatsoever about Red Hat's profit; I
actually try to work hard to keep them growing, because Red Hat, in
spite of not being a perfect Free Software company, is far more
committed to respecting its users' freedoms than any other company
I've ever considered working for. So I *am* happy to be part of it,
but I work on the inside and the outside to improve it further.

> Again, I think you are going to extremes. I think that by penetrating
> enterprise computing environments (as you call it, 'making Linux
> popular'), we *are* increasing freedom. The more people who are exposed
> to Free/Open Source Software, the more those people will participate in
> the community. The bigger the community, the more penetration we can
> get, and the bigger the community becomes again. Apparently that's not
> good enough for you, and that's fine. For me, it's great.

It is great, indeed, as long as we don't sacrifice the ultimate goals
in the process.

I don't see how refraining from calling GNU/Linux by its legitimate
name makes any difference as to the effects in the paragraph above.

I do see that not doing so has detrimental effects to the "Free/" in
"Free/Open Source Software".

> Now I'm done with this thread. By sidestepping and redirecting the
> conversation or flat ignoring what I've said, you've reminded me of that
> old saying about wrestling with a pig. The pig enjoys it and you just
> get dirty.

Nice. From asinine to pig. I guess that's progress. Soon my organs
will be used in humans, and I'll glow green in the dark thanks to
genetic engineering.

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Thomas Cameron wrote:


I've never denigrated or minimized GNU's participation in the success of
the Linux operating system, or any other operating systems. No doubt,
the GNU bits are of critical import. But that's not why I commented on
this thread.

My point is that GNU is only a *part* of that success.


Or Linux is only a *part* of the success of GNU as an operating system.

Bear in mind that GNU was a "big and professional" Free Software
operating system before Linus even began work on what would become the
Linux kernel.



There are other
projects which have been as or more important in that success. Look at
Apache and Sendmail and BIND. By your logic, it could very well be
argued that it should be called Sendmail/Linux or Apache/Linux or
BIND/Linux, as using Linux servers for mail and web DNS services was the
bread and butter for Linux for a lot of years.


If you sold a black box that ran Sendmail on a GNU operating system, and
called it "The Sendmail box", I wouldn't tell you that your name was
wrong. However, if I asked you what the *operating system* in your
black box was, I'd expect you to say that it was GNU. Sendmail isn't
running on top of Linux; it's running on a GNU operating system with
Linux as its kernel.




Those are the services
which got Linux in the back door in the enterprise. I'm the first one
to admit that without the GNU c compiler and c libraries, those would
not have been as easily done, but *all* of them came together for the
success of what the vast majority of the community and the industry
calls "Linux."


It was certainly beneficial that GNU could run applications written for
POSIX systems, but that doesn't make them part of the operating system.
I don't think that anyone is trying to make any argument other than:
the operating system was GNU before it used the Linux kernel, and
remained so when that one component was used. Whatever name we use to
refer to a software distribution aside, the name of the operating system
that they include is GNU. Calling it GNU/Linux isn't even so much about
attribution of credit to Linux as it is a clarification that the primary
GNU kernel is not included.


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Björn Persson wrote:

Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:

Björn Persson wrote:

Fedora isn't Linux, it's a Linux distribution, but everyone calls all
Linux distributions "Linux", so Fedora should be called "Linux" even
though it isn't Linux? Is that what you're saying? Unfortunately that
doesn't help much with defining what Linux *is*.

Or do you mean that Fedora isn't *equal* to Linux, it's just *a* Linux,
but everyone calls all Linuxes "Linux"?

It is kind of like the difference between a car, a Ford, and a
Mustang. A car does not have to be a Ford to be a car. A Ford doea
not have to be a Mustang. But it is still correct to call a Mustang
a car.


Should I take that to mean that your concept of "Linux" is the same as Thomas
Cameron's, whatever his concept really is?


Björn Persson

No - just that I think the argument is equivalent is like
complaining about someone calling a Mustang a car, instead of
calling it a Ford Mustang. Calling a distribution Linux is less
specific then calling it by the distribution name, but it is not
less correct then calling a specific car by the generic name car.


Depending on exactly what you are talking about, you may need to be
more specific, because the more generic term may not give enough
details. For other discussions, being more specific will actually
make the discussion harder.


Mikkel
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* Gordon Messmer <yinyang@eburg.com> [20080720 22:31]:
> Thomas Cameron wrote:
>>
>> I've never denigrated or minimized GNU's participation in the success of
>> the Linux operating system, or any other operating systems. No doubt,
>> the GNU bits are of critical import. But that's not why I commented on
>> this thread.
>>
>> My point is that GNU is only a *part* of that success.
>
> Or Linux is only a *part* of the success of GNU as an operating system.
>
> Bear in mind that GNU was a "big and professional" Free Software
> operating system before Linus even began work on what would become the
> Linux kernel.

Bearing that in mind, GNU would operate no system on it's own, as it
had no kernel to operate the system with. And holding HURD up as an
example don't really hold water, considering it's past and present
state.

I'll let you happily argue the toss until the cows come home, but GNU
is in itself not an operating system. It however holds components that
are key and very useful to run on top of an operating system such as
that which we today call Linux in order to generate a useful
combination, or distribution.

Cheers,

/Anders

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On Jul 20, 2008, "Patrick O'Callaghan" <pocallaghan@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 2008-07-19 at 17:02 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> On Jul 18, 2008, "Patrick O'Callaghan" <pocallaghan@gmail.com> wrote:

>> > So Operating System - kernel = Operating System?
> [...]
>> Incidentally, this is exactly what happened: there was this complete
>> operating system called GNU. Its kernel Hurd, still incomplete, was
>> disregarded, and Linux was used in its stead. Thus GNU[-Hurd]+Linux,
>> or GNU+Linux for short.

> So the "complete operating system called GNU" wasn't actually usable
> without the added Linux kernel. This is a strange definition of
> "complete". We seem to be going round in circles here.

Heh. Quite poor wording on my part, indeed. I guess Freud would have
something to say about the power of myths.

FTR, I meant "complete" as "whole", and "incomplete" as "still
requiring development". But it was funny to read it back after you
pointed out the apparent inconsistency :-)

Most components of the GNU operating system were already usable back
when Linux was released. The whole wasn't, indeed. What does that
mean to you? Surely not that Linux is an operating system, right?

>> You can shorten it further to GNU, if you need a single name: just
>> choose the name of the most significant component, of the largest
>> contributor, which is common practice.

> Or I can shorten it to Linux

On what grounds? IOW, what makes that fair or reasonable?

> I could even call it Watermelon,

Sure, no objection.

> but I do believe language is for communication and a shared
> terminology is helpful in this regard.

So how about we try to find some kind of agreement between all the
people who use Linux to refer to such disparate things as a kernel,
and operating system and a kind of distribution, *and* those who use
Linux to refer to the kernel (like its author), GNU/Linux to refer to
the operating system (which both of their primary authors consider ok
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.misc/msg/7781d4221fceedb2)
and GNU/Linux-based to refer to distributions containing the GNU/Linux
operating system.

>> I'm sure people who don't care could fit in this description.

> Hello! This is exactly my point. Most people Do Not Care!

And if they *really*, *honestly* don't care, there's no legitimate
reason why they should object, right?

>> But people who fight violently against GNU/Linux most often have some
>> other agenda, and find all sorts of excuses to promote only Linux, in
>> detriment of GNU and of the Free Software movement.

> Not averyone who can't be bothered saying GNU/Linux is "violently
> against" it.

Agreed. My focus is not on those who are violently against it. I
regard those as lost causes. My focus is on those who don't have a
mind set against it, that could welcome the notion of promoting
freedom, and that can believe that using a name that brings forth the
project created to bring people freedom can help in that.

> Do not, however, make the mistake of assuming that indifference
> about the name translates to indifference about Free software in
> itself.

Sure.

>> What criterium do you suggest instead?

> Criterion (it's Greek, not Latin).

Uhh. Thanks :-) (hey, just the other day I learned that criteria is
plural; thanks for helping me improving my English further. honest)

> My criterion: wherever possible, use what people understand.

Most people wouuld understand GNU+Linux or GNU/Linux. And in case
anyone misunderstands GNU+Linux, you can then explain the philosophy
behind the GNU project, and why it's harmful to this goal when all the
credit goes to Linux. Sounds like a plus to me.

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On Jul 20, 2008, Anders Karlsson <anders@trudheim.co.uk> wrote:

> And holding HURD up as an example don't really hold water,
> considering it's past and present state.

Honestly, this argument is a bit misguided. It is true that HURD's
choice of kernel model slowed things down, but the main factor for its
slow development since 1992 was that a Free kernel that worked with
the GNU operating system was available. Creating one as part of the
GNU operating system didn't make as much sense any more, just like
creating an MTA didn't make much sense because of sendmail, and
creating a text processing system didn't make much sense because of
TeX.

> I'll let you happily argue the toss until the cows come home, but GNU
> is in itself not an operating system.

So how do you refer to a full operating system minus a kernel? Say,
GNU-Hurd, or "[GNU/]Linux"-Linux?

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On Jul 20, 2008, "Mikkel L. Ellertson" <mikkel@infinity-ltd.com> wrote:

> No - just that I think the argument is equivalent is like complaining
> about someone calling a Mustang a car, instead of calling it a Ford
> Mustang.

We're not talking of a "is-a" relationship, but rather of a "part-of"
relationship.

How about calling a Mustang a tire? That would be the correct
parallel. Because, you know, following the Linux-is-an-OS logic, the
tires are pretty important, and the car really wouldn't run without
them, and it's the last part you add to a car before it runs, so let's
call it tire, even though there are more important parts of the car
that took far more work to build, such as the motor.

There's a reason why custom racing cars (say Formula 1) are most often
identified not only by the pilot's name, but also by the team, the
motor and the tires.

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On Sun, 2008-07-20 at 14:56 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:

> 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
> tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor
> less.'
>
> 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean
> so many different things.'
>
> 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -
> that's all.'
>
> Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

Apropos, Poc, apropos. That is exactly nothing short of the situation,
who's the Master. No thanks.

And, it's the >demand< that we call "Linux" "GNU/Linux" is what drives
me to say "Linux". If for no other reason than being just plain being
ornery. The only reason the distros have caved is to just shut RHS the
heck up. It was called "Linux" for years, I still call it "Linux" and I
always shall. Period. Ric

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Alexandre Oliva wrote:

On Jul 20, 2008, "Mikkel L. Ellertson" <mikkel@infinity-ltd.com> wrote:


No - just that I think the argument is equivalent is like complaining
about someone calling a Mustang a car, instead of calling it a Ford
Mustang.


We're not talking of a "is-a" relationship, but rather of a "part-of"
relationship.

How about calling a Mustang a tire? That would be the correct
parallel. Because, you know, following the Linux-is-an-OS logic, the
tires are pretty important, and the car really wouldn't run without
them, and it's the last part you add to a car before it runs, so let's
call it tire, even though there are more important parts of the car
that took far more work to build, such as the motor.

I read it more as calling a Mustang a Goodyear/Mustang because it
has Goodyear tires. But what I was commenting on was:


Fedora isn't Linux, it's a Linux distribution, but everyone calls
all Linux distributions "Linux", so Fedora should be called "Linux"
even though it isn't Linux?


When most people refer to Linux, they are talking about a Linux
distribution. Yes, a Linux distribution is more then just the
kernel, but it is the kernel that sets it apart from other system
that may also use the same user-space programs. After all, the
original GNU utility programs were not written for the Linux kernel.
There were ported to it. As were programs like Sendmail and Bind.
After all, its not like you couldn't build a Linux distribution
without any GNU programs. (kcsh, busybox, etc.) But it is nice to
have the GNU programs.


If I am understanding you correctly, you want people to only call
the kernel Linux. But people are using Linux to describe the entire
distribution that uses the Linux kernel. It would be interesting to
compare how much of a typical Linux distribution is the Kernel, how
much is the GNU package, and how much is from other sources. Just
because something is released under the GPL license does not make it
a GNU program. And not all the programs in a Linux distribution are
released under the GPL...


Mikkel
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Ric Moore wrote:
> I just took a peek at it. Crufty comes to mind. And, it took over ten
> years to do what Linus did over 10 years ago. <sighs> Ric

It's not really quite the same work. Linux is a monolithic kernel. It didn't
even have modules in its early days. The Hurd is a set of daemons around a
microkernel. It's a more advanced architecture so it should be expected to
take longer to write. Even so, the FSF apparently ran into some kind of
problems so that it took much longer than they expected.

Björn Persson

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