They call it GNU/Linux - thanks Sun! [LWN.net]

They call it GNU/Linux - thanks Sun!

Posted Apr 4, 2008 8:20 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183)
In reply to: They call it GNU/Linux - thanks Sun! by coriordan
Parent article: Sun Microsystems' Next Linux Move (Seeking Alpha)

Interesting paper.  So by far the largest part of GNU's contribution to Redhat (we can
probably generalise from that) is the development suite, in which I would include Emacs, and
glibc.  I would not count glibc as "just" part of the development suite, as an "average"
computer user does not need a compiler and friends on their computer, however indispensable
they may be to create the system, but try to remove glibc from a GNU/Linux-based system...

Re the Linux myth companies though, my personal suspicion that they just don't care much about
the GNU philosophy rather than actively trying to sabotage it.  Never attribute to malice what
can be explained by laziness :)

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They call it GNU/Linux - thanks Sun!

Posted Apr 5, 2008 19:22 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

If the toolchain (development tools) were a reason to call the project GNU/whatever, then "GNU/" would need to be prefixed to the BSDs and Mac OS X too. Even RMS does not make that claim.

As for glibc, the maintainer of many years, Ulrich Drepper, made his opinion clear some years ago.

Many other userland utilities and libraries on linux systems, that would be regarded as essential features of a Unix-like system, come from BSD and other sources, not GNU.

RMS's claim seems to be that he had a vision of developing a free operating system, using pre-existing software as far as possible (notably X and TeX) and filling in any gaps (notably toolchain, C library, coreutils) via the GNU project; though the biggest gap of all, the kernel, remained unfilled in 1991, Linux came along and made use of GNU work (just as GNU had made use of MIT's or Knuth's work); therefore the combined system must be called GNU/Linux, even though GNU never felt the need to acknowledge other projects in this way.

Moreover, his claim minimises the importance and difficulty of the kernel. The GNU project has failed to produce a usable kernel, not only in 1991, but to this day. And the main reason Linux has more users than the BSDs is the kernel: most software runs fine on BSDs, but their kernels lag in hardware support and modern features. Nobody has written a free kernel comparable to Linux from scratch; but there are several free C libraries, a few free compilers (eg TenDRA, LLVM), and BSD versions of almost all the GNU coreutils and fileutils.

So insisting on GNU/Linux sounds very much like stealing credit. RMS had the big ideas early on, and he is credited with them. He deserves no direct credit for today's working Linux systems -- at least, no more credit than hundreds of other contributors.

It's more than GCC

Posted Apr 7, 2008 9:49 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

There's Glibc, which cannot be replaced (except for toy projects and purpose built tiny distros).

There's Bash, coreutils, diffutils, findutils, grep, gzip, readline, tar, screen, etc. Most of these could in theory be replaced by BSD software, but the easiest way to do that is to wipe your GNU/Linux installation and install FreeBSD :-)

The "it's replaceable" argument actually implies removing the "Linux" from "GNU/Linux" since GNU cannot be replaced (glibc at the very least) but the Linux kernel can and has been replaced with the kernels of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris.

Writing development tools was an essential part of making an operating system. In fact, some of GNU's best work was in enabling others to help by producing the development tools and the licences. As well as GCC and GDB, the GNU project wrote Make, Gawk, GNU sed, Bison, binutils, gettext, among others.

We're not talking about a one trick pony here.

It's more than GCC

Posted Apr 7, 2008 14:55 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

glibc is replaceable by uClibc. uClibc lacks some important things glibc 
has got (most notably the binary compatibility commitment), but is still 
perfectly *usable* (well, it supports most of POSIX by now, at least the 
parts people actually use).

It's more than GCC

Posted Apr 7, 2008 15:39 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

That, as Mr. Clinton will agree, depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.

I mean, sure, it *is* possible in a post to an LWN story.

But where're the uClibc based distros?  And I don't mean toy projects, unused experiments.

/coriordan smokes a cigar

It's more than GCC

Posted Apr 7, 2008 18:05 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, I know my systems wouldn't boot without it (it's damn useful as a 
libc in an initramfs: klibc is too small to handle a lot of stuff you 
might reasonably put in there, but uClibc happens just fine).