[pp.int.general] Master's thesis | derailed

Richard Stallman rms at gnu.org
Sun Jan 19 13:12:13 CET 2014


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    Referring to it as
    "Debian Gnoo Slash Linux" all the time, however, will just get confusing
    to the person you're trying to convince to switch to free software. "Is
    it Debian, this Gnoo thing, or Linux? I don't know, oh to hell with it,
    I give up."

You can explain it in a few seconds.  You could also call it "Debian"
for the first few minutes.

    So again, "who cares", or rather "what do we actually care about as a
    free software movement"? The accreditation of GNU by using GNU/Linux,
    and if so, why stop there and just credit every upstream packager
    included by default in a distribution?

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many.

    And, as to what is actually formally correct; that would be how the
    distribution you're referring to names itself. For example, Debian
    GNU/Linux, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Why?

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#distronames1.

     Both the Linux kernel and
    most of the GNU userland are licensed with the (A)GPL which requires
    using the copyright monopoly, to not remove accreditation of the authors
    in the actual source, but has no such mention of the name.

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#require
and http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#deserve.

    Sigh. One of these days I'm just going to create a distribution with the
    Linux kernel and consisting of entirely free software, but without the
    GNU userland.

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#linuxsyswithoutgnu.

You are grasping at the usual excuses, but you would see through them
on your own, if you tried.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.



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