Why no mention of GNU?

[John M. Gabriele]

> Now hoary is out, there is time for talking. On ubuntu-devel, this
> question was asked (see
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2005-March/006386.html ).
> I am very interested, but Matt Zimmerman requested to move this thread
> to this list.
>
> Here I go:
> [snip good stuff]

Thanks for the heads-up Eric. Sorry to start a new thread, but
I'm posting to this discussion late.

I'm the original poster referred to. Yup, in hindsight, posting
to ubuntu-devel was the wrong forum. I didn't know what "sounder"
was until Eric pointed it out.

I'm a Debian Sarge user. I'd consider trying out Ubuntu, but
from taking a quick look at their web site, it seems that they
munge together the ideas of free software and open source software.
The front page says:

>
> "Ubuntu is entirely committed to the principles of free and open
> source software development; we encourage people to use free and
> open source software, improve it and pass it on."
>

I don't quite know what that means. Further, I don't see any links to
either the FSF homepage, or any references to GNU either.

>From what I *can* tell (from the "Manifesto" paragraph), the Ubuntu
folks believe software should be available gratis, should have good
i18n, and should be customizable.

Hmm... even the about page only mentions "Debian" and not
"Debian GNU/Linux". On their philosophy page:
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/philosophy/document_view
they have this to say:

>
> While some refer to free and open source as competing movements
> with different ends, we do not see free and open source software
> as either distinct or incompatible.
>

Hmm... I believe they are distinct movements, and I don't see
how it can be said they're not.

I originally posted to ubuntu-devel because I was curious why
neither GNU nor the FSF is hardly mentioned on the Ubuntu site --
especially since Ubuntu is derived from Debian.

After looking into it some more, I'm not sure there's really anything
to see here. It looks like the Ubuntu folks are more interested in
open source software than the free software movement (which is their
prerogative -- I'm certainly not complaining, as it's none of my
business :). Maybe they simply chose Debian to build off of because of
the great infrastructure rather than the ideals. Since Debian is strongly
committed to free software, and since they openly recognize the
contributions of GNU and the FSF, I'll be sticking with Debian.

---J



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/