Principal contributor? [LWN.net]

Principal contributor?

Posted Jun 6, 2002 7:25 UTC (Thu) by morhippo (subscriber, #334)
Parent article: Re: it's not GNU/Linux; it's GNU

RMS writes: "All of the contributors deserve credit, but some deserve it more strongly than others. The system is basically GNU; the GNU Project is the principal contributor. The others are secondary contributors. They all deserve credit, but the principal contributor deserves it most." Which reminds me of Orwell's Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. Also I do not understand how GNU became the principal component. Historically first, yes. If you look at compilation, GCC is a vital component. glibc is used by almost all applications. But the kernel is at the base of my system. More lines of code are in KDE and QT than in all the GNU tools on my system. I hardly use any original GNU programs (bash is used a lot, though). X11 is seen on the screen all the time. I think RMS is showing some selfishness in declaring his project as principal and pushing ALL other components to a secondary position without any explanation. His insistance on "GNU/Linux" is IMHO ridiculous.

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Principal contributors of the core system, eh?

Posted Jun 7, 2002 0:13 UTC (Fri) by xtifr (subscriber, #143) [Link]

X11 and KDE may be the biggest things on your system, but on many, many GNU/Linux systems, they're not there at all. My servers tend to have the Linux Kernel, a bunch of GNU software, and one or two server applications (such as Apache or Sendmail and sshd). My desktop has Linux and GNU and X11, but no gnome or kde or apache or sendmail. When you look at all these systems set up by all kinds of different people for different purposes, what do they have in common? The kernel and the GNU utilities/libraries. That's pretty much it. And most of that irreducible core system, by weight, is GNU. The optional addons like x11/kde/apache/whatever may be large, but they are optional, and thus, secondary.

I personally have no objections to people referring to the system informally as "Linux". I usually do myself. But this tired, flawed counter-argument about how "everyone whose code might be installed on a system deserves as much credit as the FSF" is just plain silly. There is more to an OS than just the kernel, but that doesn't mean that every optional application or game is really part of the OS.

Principal contributors of the core system, eh?

Posted Jun 7, 2002 16:41 UTC (Fri) by DeletedUser342 ((unknown), #342) [Link]

You rightly said that the GNU tools are important and essential on _your_ systems/servers and that there is nothing else that is equally important (besides the kernel). Well, that's nice for you. I, on the other hand, use my machine as workstation. I have completely different priorities and KDE is more perceptibale and more important to me than all the GNU tools. Sure, the system might not run if I would remove all those tools, but that's not the point. The point is that X and KDE are primary for me and GNU is only secondary.

Linux is the industry-wide established name. If you want to use a different one, feel free to do so. But please do not try to force things on others that don't make sense to them.

All this debate is completely ideological.

Principal contributors of the core system, eh? - Well, yes

Posted Jun 8, 2002 5:51 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser1800 ((unknown), #1800) [Link]

You rightly said that the GNU tools are important and essential on _your_ systems/servers and that there is nothing else that is equally important (besides the kernel). Well, that's nice for you. I, on the other hand, use my machine as workstation. I have completely different priorities and KDE is more perceptibale and more important to me than all the GNU tools. Sure, the system might not run if I would remove all those tools, but that's not the point. The point is that X and KDE are primary for me and GNU is only secondary.

I would suggest, then, that you de-install all the GNU tools from your system - they are just wasting space and not being used. The fact is that without X, KDE, Gnome, etc. the system will still boot and be usable. Without either Linux or the GNU tools/libs this is not the case. THAT is why GNU and Linux are the key components and the rest is secondary.

All this debate is completely ideological.

You noticed. That may be because the FSF is firstly an ideological organisation. I realise ideology over anything but the dollar sign is off the corporate radar, but that doesn't invalidate it.

Principal contributor?

Posted Jun 8, 2002 23:38 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser846 ((unknown), #846) [Link]

Any GNU/Linux distributions, be they a single floppy disk distribution or one that comes on a DVD has to have major GNU components distributed with it, otherwise, as you have rightly pointed out, they will not work. The fact of the matter is that if you were to download a Linux kernel from source you will need GNU components to compile and make it work. The point that you are arguing is more to do with what constitutes a minimal system, and that is where RMS's charitable (GNU/OpenOffice/Linux) response comes in.

More than often I ask people to use the term GNU/Linux to promote the licensing agenda of the GNU project. Without it GNU/Linux and the very active (and vocal!) community that have grown around it, and which you are part of, wouldn't be. More than often the community has taken on issues that have little to do with software but have promoted the goodwill exalted by the GNU founders.

I will admit having truncate off the GNU part of the name when speaking to people who have accepted the role of GNU (go on then, I've got my asbestos pants on!) but I've always made it a point to prepend GNU when speaking to newbies or non-GNU software users. (I'm trying to right this wrong by the way!)

So to all those arguing against, all I can say is look back at what the 3 letters have done for you and then you decide if it's worth its place at the high altar.