ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jul 2, 2005 6:50 UTC (Sat) by rqosa (guest, #24136)
In reply to: ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet) by donbarry
Parent article: ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)

> The Linux part of GNU/Linux was merely the first practically useable kernel

"Merely"? That's an awfully big "merely".

> and would have been pointless had not a decade of work, essentially all of it under the GPL license, been made possible by the FSF and Stallman

Well, GNU is not the only free implementation of the standard Unix userland stuff; BSD has its own implementations of much of it, and more recently there's also BusyBox and uClibc. The only irreplaceable GNU software is GCC, binutils, and GDB.

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ESR: 'We Don't Need the GPL Anymore' (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jul 6, 2005 19:38 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]

The only irreplaceable GNU software is GCC, binutils, and GDB.

"Only"? That's an awfully big "only".

Even so, you've missed the point. At the time Stallman began all of the examples you cited as free implementations of standard Unix userland stuff either didn't exist or did so under a legal cloud. BusyBox and uClibc are particularly bad examples because they were created to deal with technical challenges in embedded systems, not to displace effective components like Bash and glibc everywhere. When the Free Software Foundation created the those packages they were necessary because no other free software alternative was available.

We have a complete free operating system today because Stallman and the Free Software Foundation set out to create one decades ago. That there are now many alternatives does not diminish that achievement -- indeed it makes the community as a whole richer.