[Discuss] Why use Linux?

[mbr at arlsoft.com (MBR)]

As I wrote earlier, Micky's a personal friend, and we're both involved 
in the local Drupal community here in Boston.  I did not intend for her 
to include in her presentation everything I wrote in my email.  I was 
making points to her that I thought she should be aware of if she were 
going to act in the capacity of someone knowledgeable about Linux at 
GLADCamp (next month's Drupal conference in L.A.) so she could carry on 
informed conversations with individuals after her presentation.  There's 
no question that the origins of Linux are in the GNU project, the BSD 
effort from which the networking code comes, MIT's project Athena from 
which the X Window System comes, the XFree86 effort which ported X to 
the Intel architecture, and from Linus' effort to create a kernel.  And 
I'm probably forgetting other contributors.  My point was that she 
should become aware of the several contributors who made Linux possible, 
rather than perpetuating the myth that Linus wrote it all singlehandedly.

This is not political posturing.  This is being honest and giving credit 
where it's due.

As for, "Most people don't care one iota about Free Software, though 
they may well be very interested in free software.  Most people just 
want to get stuff done, in my experience", I think Randall Monroe said 
it best: http://xkcd.com/743

    MBR


On 2/12/2014 12:49 PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 04:47:02AM -0500, MBR wrote:
>> Hi Micky.  If you're going to mention Linux and the FSF, it might be
>> best if you were to call it "GNU/Linux" rather than "Linux" and
>> explain why the FSF (and Stallman in particular) prefers "GNU/Linux"
>> to simply "Linux". (See "What's in a Name?
> Or, it might very well not.  This kind of political posturing is one
> of the things which, in my experience, actually gives some people a
> bad taste for Free Software.  A lot of people feel that this issue
> largely boils down to Stallman being a whiny crybaby for not getting
> sufficiently prominent recognition that he thinks he deserves (rightly
> or wrongly), which again, can be a big turn off for a lot of people.
>
> Most people don't care one iota about Free Software, though they may
> well be very interested in free software.  Most people just want to
> get stuff done, in my experience.  For those that do care, the
> information is plenty easy to find... and just mentioning the FSF is
> probably plenty enough of a cue for those people to follow.
>

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