Red Hat 7.2 B2 comments (rant)

[ron.peterson at yellowbank.com (Ron Peterson)]

> On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, Derek D. Martin wrote:
> > At some point hitherto, Rob Ransbottom hath spake thusly:

> > What exactly makes them GNU/Linux?  The fact that they include a fair
> > amount of (OPTIONAL) GNU application software that may or may not ever
> > be installed by the user?  It's true that there is a large amount of
> > GNU software shipped with a Linux system; almost none of which is
> > actually required to be installed for the system to be useful.  This

> Try stripping a system of GNU stuff, then tell me how well it runs and
> what you actually used it for.

I don't believe rms' obsession w/ the name GNU/Linux has much to do w/
the percentage makeup of a distribution's components.  He wants people
to use the name GNU to raise awareness of the principles underlying free
software.  I.E. - he's not saying "we wrote all this software, you'd
better be thankful", but instead "GNU represents a philosophy about
software that we want more people to be aware of".

Sure, a distribution contains many non-GNU components.  But most of
those components, even if they use a non-GNU license, are premised on
many of the same principles that GNU doggedly promotes.  But does anyone
look to Apache or perl or Linux et al (who's al?) to advocate in favor
of these principles?  Not really.

Of course, I represent neither GNU nor rms, but I believe that's the
thinking behind the GNU/Linux campaign.

-- 
Ron Peterson                   -o)
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