Re: Are the FSF helpful?

[Artur Grabowski <art@blahonga.org>]

"Ciaran O'Riordan" <ciaran@member.fsf.org> writes:

> Hello all.
> 
> I am a Free Software developer.  My platform of choice is GNU but I
> try to write software that works on any unix-like Free OS.  I recently
> decided to install OpenBSD so that I could check for portability
> issues.  While reading the OpenBSD docs I was surprised that GNU/Linux
> is referred to as "Linux".

Sigh.
Let's see where Linux is mentioned on our web pages.

users.html, testimonials.html, support.html, press.html, orders.html,
 groups.html, ftp.html, events.html, donations.html -
  this is information provided by other people. Do you want us to
  change what other people say?

sparc.html, hppa.html, docum.html - project names with "Linux" in them,
  do you want us to change their names?

books.html - Do you want us to change book titles?

porting.html, policy.html - correct reference to the kernel.

plus*.html, index.html, i386.html, i386-laptop.html, errata*.html,
 audio-port.html, announce*.html, 2*.html, 3*.html - talk about linux
  kernel emulation.

26.html - talks about OpenSSH ported to Linux.

So. This far only 26.html is even close to "violating" the sacred rule
of twisting words the way RMS wants to twist them. Now, let's evaluate
the virality of GNU (GPL) wrt. to porting OpenSSH to Linux. For
OpenSSH to run on Linux you need a kernel and a set of libraries. The
kernel is not GNU, so it doesn't require us to say GNU, so only the
libraries could. AFAIK the only libraries needed (at least at that time)
would be openssl and libc. openssl is not GNU, but with libc we have
trouble. It's GNU/libc. But! The virality of GNU libraries only works if
the software uses features that no other library has. Since there is
a non-GNU libc for Linux (and I'm pretty sure that OpenSSH worked with it),
OpenSSH works on Linux without any GNU viruses, so we are not "required"
to call it GNU/Linux. QED.

Now, did you have some real issue that you want to bring up or did you
just react with Pavlovian reflexes?

Oh, and the custom here is that generally whiners are mocked or ignored.
If you want to be heard, please provide diffs. If you just want to
help someones political agenda, you are not welcome.

//art