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How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?Posted Jun 1, 2011 5:29 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)In reply to: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux? by mikankun Parent article: How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?
Well, since you bring that up... Here's what Ulrich Drepper had to say about RMS, GNU and glibc, about ten years ago. [...] For example, permission to use the GNU C Library in non-free programs enables many more people to use the whole GNU operating system, as well as its variant, the GNU/Linux operating system. This $&%$& demands everything to be labeled in a way which credits him and he does not stop before making completely wrong statements like "its variant". I find this completely unacceptable and can assure everybody that I consider none of the code I contributed to glibc (which is quite a lot) to be as part of the GNU project and so a major part of what Stallman claims credit for is simply going away.
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How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux? Posted Jun 1, 2011 5:47 UTC (Wed) by mikankun (guest, #74785) [Link]
I understand where he's coming from but regardless if he's contributing code to glibc he's making his code part of a GNU project as the library's development was funded by the FSF for the GNU project.
How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux? Posted Jun 1, 2011 6:00 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
that is the attitude that I was thinking of
if he were to fork the code (which would basically consist of him choosing different hosting at this point, he really has run all the glibc development for a _long_ time), would you still consider that a GNU contribution?
It's very clear cut, actually... Posted Jun 1, 2011 7:12 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] When you contribute to GNU you assign your copyright to FSF. As long as you do that yes, it's GNU contribution. Is it voluntary or not is good question, but it's clearly part of GNU. If the supposed fork will stop assigning copyrights to FSF you can claim it's no longer GNU project (like happened with XEmacs). The history shows it's not easy to maintain viable full-blown fork of GNU software (it's possible to maintain set of incremental patches like EGLibC does - but this hardly can be called a separate forked project).
It's very clear cut, actually... Posted Jun 1, 2011 13:16 UTC (Wed) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] GCC is a fork that has been maintained since 1997.
Sorry, but no... Posted Jun 2, 2011 8:28 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] EGCS was an experiment in new development methodology and never tried to split from GNU. All changes were always assigned to FSF and when EGCS was renamed to GCC it still accepted FSF's (actually RMS) decisions WRT to licenses, etc. Basically it never tried to stray away from guidance of FSF so there never was any need to fight with it. Emacs/XEmacs was such a split while xemacs is quite successful you rarely can find it installed by default. True, association with GNU is very often a burden and the only thing it gives the project is exposure - but this is quite important for free projects...
How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux? Posted Jun 1, 2011 6:11 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
It really makes no difference what you "consider" to be part of the GNU project. The fact is that Glibc is the software you chose to add to. All the code you wrote for it is now held under FSF's exclusive copyright, with your explicit signed approval. Glibc was then and is still unambiguously under FSF management, $&%$& or no. (Eglibc, used in Debian and offshoots, is another story; your code is in there too, and still owned by FSF, but managed by somebody else. You might feel better about working on eglibc.)
The fact is that the Linux kernel would have been useless had there not been a GNU project, already in place, to drop it wholesale into. If Linux had not come along, a newly unencumbered BSD kernel would have been adapted a year or two later, and would since have forked, and would now be managed by mostly the same people as do Linux today -- maybe Linus included. It would, then, have been a GNU/BSD system. The same names would be complaining about that, instead, with arguments of exactly equal merit.
How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux? Posted Jun 1, 2011 7:48 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
First, I am not Ulrich Drepper. I thought I made it clear that I was merely quoting him.
Second, the idea that the GNU system in 1991 was a complete Unix-like system lacking only a kernel, into which Linux could conveniently be dropped, is a myth propagated by Stallman. There is no such thing as a complete system without a kernel. GNU did contribute the C library, compiler/toolchain, and a bunch of system utilities. These things existed in, eg, /opt/gnu on Sun systems, and were very far from being a complete system. BSD contributed a bunch of other utilities. As did MIT (X), Knuth (TeX), Ousterhout (Tcl/Tk), Wall (Perl), and many, many others. Putting all of these disparate things together into a working system was a significant undertaking, that was not done until AFTER Linus published his kernel -- because A WORKING SYSTEM REQUIRES A KERNEL! Which, incidentally, the GNU project still does not have, twenty years down the line -- hence the grimace whenever they encounter Linux.
How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux? Posted Jun 1, 2011 9:31 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
>Second, the idea that the GNU system in 1991 was a complete Unix-like system lacking only a kernel, into which Linux could conveniently be dropped, is a myth propagated by Stallman. There is no such thing as a complete system without a kernel. GNU did contribute the C library, compiler/toolchain, and a bunch of system utilities.
"What did the Romans ever do for us?" (c) Monty Python
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