that old GNU/Linux argument
Antonio Olivares
olivares14031 at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 28 08:56:17 UTC 2008
> > It is a war.
>
> Indeed. A war for freedom for all software users. A war
> that started
> back in 1983, and whose proponents have suffered many
> threats and
> losses, but also several wins.
>
> One of the greatest threats these days are people who just
> don't care
> about freedom, who just want to use the software and who
> would love to
> sacrifice whatever freedom was already achieved for some
> temporary
> convenience. People who will fight vigorously against any
> attempt to
> educate others about these issues.
I care for freedom. I just don't care for attaching the name GNU to Linux like in GNU/Linux. It does not make sense to me, because of many reasons I have posted before. Other projects will ask that you attach their names as well and this could become a problem in not being able to satisfy all of the peoples' egos.
It already is there, users have to type
$ uname -o
in a command line terminal. If they do this, they get what you want :)
>
> They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
> temporary
> safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Ben
> Franklin, freedom
> fighter
>
> > A war between the FSF who want the GNU part attached
> to Linux
It is a continuation of the disputes but now moved over here
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-August/msg00101.html
>
> This is just a smaller battle, not the war. Your choice of
> words is
> quite poor and extremely unfair. The FSF is not the only
> one who
> makes this request and works for software freedom or on the
> GNU
> project, and nobody is requesting to have their own names
> attached to
> Linux. Linux is a kernel.
Yes it is, it is also a Distribution composed of GNU parts and non GNU parts.
> All we ask for is to have the
> name of the
> operating system created to give people freedom back where
> it should
> always have been: on the operating system that people chose
> to run on
> top of the kernel Linux.
Where it should have/could have/would have
shouda/woulda/coulda but it isn't. Well it is, just users have to type in a terminal shell
$ uname -o
and they will get what you want, and RMS wants as well :)
>
> --
The effort you and others have put up here could be better spent requiring that Linux Distributions mandatorily add the GNU/ tag to Linux.
Debian GNU/Linux already does this, ask Slackware, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, PC/GNU/LinuxOS, Gentoo, Sabayon, Sidux, ..., all the Distros at Distrowatch except the *BSDs and OpenSolaris to add the tag. My guess is that they do when one does
[olivares at localhost ~]$ uname -o
GNU/Linux
[olivares at localhost ~]$ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.25.11-97.fc9.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Jul 21 01:09:10 EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
They should get what you want. Is that enough? Was that too hard to do?
As much as I would like to remove it, I have found a way using sed, and sed is part of GNU
[olivares at localhost ~]$ uname -o > uname-o
[olivares at localhost ~]$ sed -e 's/GNU\/Linux/Linux/g' uname-o
Linux
[olivares at localhost ~]$
What good does that do? Nothing GNU/Linux is still there, I just suppressed its output using sed.
BTW, other places also argue about GNU/Linux.
One is here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-technology/8721-gnu-linux-vs-linux.html
Linux 12 30.00%
GNU/Linux 8 20.00%
Makes no difference but I prefer Linux 19 47.50%
Makes no difference but I prefer GNU/Linux 1 2.50%
What do you think of that? Does it make sense?
Regards,
Antonio
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