[Ilugc] why GNU should not be added to linux
- From: lawgon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kenneth Gonsalves)
- Date: Sat Jun 5 09:38:18 2010
On Saturday 05 June 2010 09:02:48 you wrote:
projects that are directly developed and maintained by the GNU project do
not work properly and are mostly useless - like hurd.
Yes, Red Hat does maintain or contribute significantly to several GNU
projects including coreutils, Glibc, GCC etc and while I understand
your point, you seem to make a false distinction between directly and
indirectly maintained projects from GNU. GNU is a umbrella effort of
the FSF to create a completely free software environment and there is
participation from volunteers and multiple organizations, commercial
and otherwise. FSF doesn't employ anyone to directly to work on any of
the GNU projects anymore although they did in the past.
I am in complete agreement with you. The reality is that every component of
the linux os is maintained and developed by some one or the other. Some do it
under their own banner, others do it under other banners. FSF has always had a
drive to enroll developers under it's banner and get them to add 'GNU' to the
name and license the software under the GPL and also assign the copyright to
the FSF. Fair enough. Unfortunately there are some people who think that if a
piece of software has the word 'GNU' in it, then it means that the GNU project
has developed and is maintaining that software. This is as silly as saying
that any software maintained and developed on sourceforge is maintained and
developed by sourceforge. I also agree that in the early days, support of an
umbrella organisation like GNU could have given some benefits of help and
protection to the authors of the software. But that was 25-30 years ago. The
situation is radically different now. Huge volumes of code, licensed under a
plethora of licenses and hosted all over the place have been produced. All
without the 'protection' of the GNU project.
Also I find that apart from RMS, no developer is really bothered about the name
and banner under which the software he is developing is. If one joins any
project, or contributes to one, one accepts whatever name is there. Sometimes
in the case of a fork or in case of disagreement, there may be a name change -
but this is rare.
What I am fighting against is the idea that 'without GNU toolchain there would
have been no linux'. The people who developed the components of the toolchain
would still have developed them - they would have named it something else.
That is all.
--
regards
kg
http://livejournal.com/lawgon
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