On Saturday 30 December 2006 18:32, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
It's a chicken & egg situation. "Linux can't do anything without GNU" and "GNU is nothing without Linux"... oh wait GNU will have Hurd... whenever it is ready...
irrelevant. You can use the gnu tools, as also tons of other FOSS stuff without a linux kernel. See my earlier mail. Everyone can decide which is more important based on their own logic.
Also, I feel that it's unfair that any contribution to FOSS be called "secondary", especially key contributions such as Linux, X.org, Apache... stuff without which Linux would never have gained any recognition.
Absolutely. not just linux, neither would have the FSF or X.org or Apache, or KDE. All of them have been instrumental in everybody else's success. The common thread running thru them is the ecosystem of freedom afforded and protected by the GNU GPL. and that is what the FSF is shouting about. In an attempt to pander to popular taste do not dilute the freedom message. State it once at the beginning and once in the end. Fill the inbetween with whatever takes your fancy.
They're not wrong in asking for recognition for their work, so I wouldn't say grab credit. It's just they they want everything that has their tool suite (namely, all Linux distros) to have GNU/Linux instead of Linux as recognition since "they are the principal contributors".
How on earth did u jump to that conclusion. The fsf website states clearly and accurately that accreditation is of limited importance. But the principle of freedom is uneqivivocally important. Organisations like the OSI went about approving licences like the CDDL and Nokia Open Source License (NOKOS License) Version 1.0 both of which cannot be termed free by any stretch of imagination. And yet we have people labelling gpld stuff as open source. They are as different as cheese and cyanide.