Why no mention of GNU?

[Michael Banck]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 09:27:30AM -0400, Etienne Goyer wrote:
> J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> > The FSF doesn't ask for that, they ask that when the GNU OS is being talked
> > about, people include the word GNU to describe it.  Hence, GNU/Linux (or
> > GNU+Linux, if you prefer) is the variant of the GNU OS using the Linux
> > kernel.
> 
> Which bring an interesting question : is Linux (the kernel) part of the
> GNU OS ?  The FSF people seem to believe so,

This is certainly not the case. According to the FSF, GNU/Linux is a
variant of the GNU system with Linux as its kernel. Similar things go
for GNU/kFreeBSd, GNU/kNetBSD and GNU/Hurd.  Only the operating system
released by the FSF/the GNU project is "the" GNU system (using the GNU
Hurd as its kernel), which of course has not happened yet if one does
not count the pre-alpha GNU-0.1 and GNU-0.2 releases from sometime
around '98.

This is also the (or one of the) reason why it is called "Debian
GNU/Hurd" and not just "Debian GNU", as it is not released by the FSF
and merely the Debian variant of the GNU system based on the GNU Hurd.

> Wheter you believe Torvalds contribution to be important or not, he
> still hold the copyright on the kernel as a whole and steer its
> development.

(He does not hold the copyright on the kernel as a whole, as far as I
know there are no copyright assignments for the Linux kernel and every
contributor retains their copyright for the parts they wrote)

> Which, in turn, bring up a question I raised earlier in the
> discussion: is Ubuntu a GNU project ?  

Of course not.

> It does'nt seem to me, thus I don't see the point of using the GNU
> prefix in naming it.  

Note that it is not "GNU Linux" (which would indicate that Linux was a
GNU project), but "GNU/Linux" (which indicates that it is an aggregation
of the GNU system with the Linux kernel). Similarily, there is a
difference between "GNU Hurd" (the set of user space daemons providing
(besides other things) the conventional functionality of a Unix kernel
together with an underlying microkernel and the GNU C library) and
"GNU/Hurd" which is a variant of the GNU system bundled with the GNU
Hurd.

Note that I don't have an opinion on whether Ubuntu should pick up GNU
as part of its name or on its website (or at least, I have tried to not
voice it here)


Michael

-- 
<jbailey> o: But doesn't everyone use utf-8 now? =)_
<jbailey> Marcus was even using the *hurd* to read his Korean spam.
<jbailey> If the Hurd can do it, I assume anything else can by now.