Re: Are the FSF helpful?

[Frank Van Damme <frank.vandamme@student.kuleuven.ac.be>]

On Thursday 02 January 2003 02:11, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> 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".

<rest snipped>

I see your point (which has been made a 1000 times at no avail, all to the 
frustration of Stallmen and Co).

However I think this is more an issue of convenience. The moment you say 
Gnu/Linux because you should credit the fsf because you run Gnu, you delve 
into over-complexity, because you can start nit-picking about wether Gnu is 
really used. For some , you need to recursively get the whole ftp archive on 
gnu.org, for others you really need but the basics of gnu, like libc, if 
even. So we name the whole thing Linux for the sake of simplicity, because 
every app uses the kernel. 

Besides, you can't credit everyone. For most people "kernel" is synonym to 
"operating system", and I'm tempted to leave it at that. Or in response to 
the question "what OS you're running?" must I answer "Well, I mostly use 
Debian Gnu/Linux/kde/gnome/afterstep/xfree/enlightenment/openssh/foo
mail check applet in my taskbar or should I include all 8800 names in the 
Debian distribution? :-)  

Openbsd adepts have a much simpler life, it's one project with everything 
included (with a kernel), no 100's of utilities with different version 
schemes.

Don't worry, you'll get over it one day :-)))

Frank