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The whole "GNU/Linux" story always struck me as incredibly arrogant and ridiculous. A typical modern Linux system has more lines of web browser code than lines

The whole "GNU/Linux" story always struck me as incredibly arrogant and ridiculous. A typical modern Linux system has more lines of web browser code than lines of GNU code. Should we start calling them "Chromium/Linux"? If you follow the FSF's actions closely, you will find they're incredibly insecure about people switching away from their software to alternatives. Typically the alternatives are not GPLed but rather under a permissive BSD-like license, and they latch onto this to deride any new competitors [1]. But those competitors don't typically exist because people hate the GPL; they exist because -surprise- GNU software isn't the be-all end-all, and it's a fairly common pattern for GNU maintainers to be reluctant to change at best, or actively hostile to third parties at worst (anyone remember glibc's Ulrich Drepper?). Then there's how Stallman vetoed GCC having a useful AST output mode (a requirement to build smart IDEs and other development tools - yes, including such features in emacs) because he was scared of third party proprietary extensions. That's one reason why clang took off - its extensibility and flexibility, which the FSF was always against GCC having. The FSF (and particularly Stallman) hates clang, again reaching for licensing and moral arguments, because they just can't accept that some people may have written technically superior software to theirs, and done so with a more permissive license. [2] In the end, it's hard to see the FSF's response to these things are anything but controlling and attempting to stifle competition. And we absolutely need competition for a healthy free software ecosystem. There is no value in trying to represent GNU as some kind of indispensable component of a Linux-based OS - they aren't, and pretending they are hurts us. [1] https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 [2] https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00247.html https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00247.html

traverseda 5y ago
>Should we start calling them "Chromium/Linux"? Well, if chrome is the primary set of userspace tools, "chromebook" might be a reasonable name. I'm not sure how to differentiate android/linux (or even Chrome/linux) from UNIX-philosophy/linux, whether UNIX-philosophy ends up being busybox or GNU or something else.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Honestly, where do you even draw the line? Android has a shell, it has userland tools (toybox), it has a service manager (not unlike systemd), it has a compositor (not unlike Wayland) and an audio server (not unlike PulseAudio). Sure, we can look at it and say "this somehow doesn't look like a Linux desktop", but that's mostly based on lineage. It's the ship of Theseus story - if Linux desktops today are so different from those of old that we've basically replaced all the pieces, how are they different from an OS that made more of a clean break?
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Your comment makes a very good point. Android really does seem like a Linux system when described in this way. I may need to re-evaluate my attitudes here.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Except most of that stuff is only visible via Java APIs, NDK userspace is hands-off to such tools A fact that termux people refuse to accept, hence why it doesn't run on the latest versions, unless they now finally accepted that POSIX isn't part of the official NDK stable APIs and have started calling into JNI. Plenty of Linux software won't be compilable just with these APIs, unless they are game based, https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      That's an upper level platform policy question, which is rather difficult to compare to because... Linux doesn't really have anything like that. Try running a dynamically linked executable with more than the basic dependencies on a Linux distro 2 years newer and see how many missing dependency libraries you run into due to ABI changes and soname bumps... FWIW, Termux works perfectly fine on the latest version of Android - what they can't do is push updates through the Play Store, because the minimum required API level now imposes security restrictions (no running executables from your data directory) that break it. But that doesn't make Android not a Linux system; you can still adb shell into it and run commands and shell scripts and copy new binaries in and run them. This is not unlike Linux container systems, which also break various apps. It comes with the territory of containerizing applications that you have to break insecure legacy APIs; this is not unique to Android.
teddyh 5y ago
> incredibly arrogant and ridiculous > The FSF (and particularly Stallman) hates > FSF's response to these things are […] controlling and attempting to stifle competition The “hate” seem to be all on your part.
- hyproxia 5y ago
  Most of the people that dislike GNU base their dislike on political reasons (because they hate the GPL or Stallman or whatever) and then try to embarrassingly justify their hate by shoehorning technical jargon.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    Most of the people that support the FSF base their support on vague poorly-grounded ideological reasons (because they drank the Stallman kool-aid or whatever) and then try to embarrassingly justify the missteps of their idols by deferring to said vague ideology to deflect from the elephant in the room. I have a whole Twitter thread on how the modern FSF's policies actually hurt user freedom while being completely inconsistent with their own ideals, if you'd perhaps consider opening up your mind to criticism of them: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1377899929209774081 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1377899929209774081
    - bregma 5y ago
      The FSF is a political organization. Supporting it for political reasons is wholly appropriate. Disparaging the people who do so with put-downs and insults instead of engaging in reasoned debate is not.
      - marcan_42 5y ago
        The FSF has long been shifting from being a political organization to being a religious organization. Its policies are no longer consistent with their own views of user freedom. Read the thread for more info. They are literally promoting things that hurt user freedoms - things like promoting ignorance of security flaws, promoting hiding proprietary firmware (because it's only a problem if it looks like a blob), promoting actively crippling hardware (thus reducing its usefulness with present and future free software), and more. Those who blindly support them without taking a deep look into whether their actual policies are consistent and rational and further their goals are no different from religious fanatics who stand by ancient scripture while ignoring thousands of years of progress. I support user freedom. I support users having control over their own devices, knowledge of what software runs on them, and knowledge of what choices are available so they can make an informed decision. I spend most of my time working on reverse engineering and porting Linux to proprietary hardware (Apple M1) so users have the freedom to run whatever OS they want. I cannot support the FSF, an organization which supports censoring security vulnerability warnings when fixing them involves updating proprietary firmware (that already exists anyway); that supports burying proprietary firmware in non-introspectable read-only memory because then they can "pretend it's hardware", then selling the result as "fully libre" (even though the same device with the same firmware visible and accessible to the user would be much more free and transparent, allowing introspection, auditing, and replacement with a free alternative); that supports physically destroying hardware components that presently require a proprietary driver to function, ignoring the possibility that free software drivers might appear in the future. These are real FSF policies and actions. This is what you are supporting when you support the FSF. It's not user freedom any more. It's religious nonsense like "blobs in /lib/firmware are bad, we can't have any blobs be out in the clear".

traverseda 5y ago

>Should we start calling them "Chromium/Linux"? Well, if chrome is the primary set of userspace tools, "chromebook" might be a reasonable name. I'm not sure how to differentiate android/linux (or even Chrome/linux) from UNIX-philosophy/linux, whether UNIX-philosophy ends up being busybox or GNU or something else.

marcan_42 5y ago
Honestly, where do you even draw the line? Android has a shell, it has userland tools (toybox), it has a service manager (not unlike systemd), it has a compositor (not unlike Wayland) and an audio server (not unlike PulseAudio). Sure, we can look at it and say "this somehow doesn't look like a Linux desktop", but that's mostly based on lineage. It's the ship of Theseus story - if Linux desktops today are so different from those of old that we've basically replaced all the pieces, how are they different from an OS that made more of a clean break?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Your comment makes a very good point. Android really does seem like a Linux system when described in this way. I may need to re-evaluate my attitudes here.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Except most of that stuff is only visible via Java APIs, NDK userspace is hands-off to such tools A fact that termux people refuse to accept, hence why it doesn't run on the latest versions, unless they now finally accepted that POSIX isn't part of the official NDK stable APIs and have started calling into JNI. Plenty of Linux software won't be compilable just with these APIs, unless they are game based, https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    That's an upper level platform policy question, which is rather difficult to compare to because... Linux doesn't really have anything like that. Try running a dynamically linked executable with more than the basic dependencies on a Linux distro 2 years newer and see how many missing dependency libraries you run into due to ABI changes and soname bumps... FWIW, Termux works perfectly fine on the latest version of Android - what they can't do is push updates through the Play Store, because the minimum required API level now imposes security restrictions (no running executables from your data directory) that break it. But that doesn't make Android not a Linux system; you can still adb shell into it and run commands and shell scripts and copy new binaries in and run them. This is not unlike Linux container systems, which also break various apps. It comes with the territory of containerizing applications that you have to break insecure legacy APIs; this is not unique to Android.

teddyh 5y ago

> incredibly arrogant and ridiculous > The FSF (and particularly Stallman) hates > FSF's response to these things are […] controlling and attempting to stifle competition The “hate” seem to be all on your part.

hyproxia 5y ago
Most of the people that dislike GNU base their dislike on political reasons (because they hate the GPL or Stallman or whatever) and then try to embarrassingly justify their hate by shoehorning technical jargon.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Most of the people that support the FSF base their support on vague poorly-grounded ideological reasons (because they drank the Stallman kool-aid or whatever) and then try to embarrassingly justify the missteps of their idols by deferring to said vague ideology to deflect from the elephant in the room. I have a whole Twitter thread on how the modern FSF's policies actually hurt user freedom while being completely inconsistent with their own ideals, if you'd perhaps consider opening up your mind to criticism of them: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1377899929209774081 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1377899929209774081
  - bregma 5y ago
    The FSF is a political organization. Supporting it for political reasons is wholly appropriate. Disparaging the people who do so with put-downs and insults instead of engaging in reasoned debate is not.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      The FSF has long been shifting from being a political organization to being a religious organization. Its policies are no longer consistent with their own views of user freedom. Read the thread for more info. They are literally promoting things that hurt user freedoms - things like promoting ignorance of security flaws, promoting hiding proprietary firmware (because it's only a problem if it looks like a blob), promoting actively crippling hardware (thus reducing its usefulness with present and future free software), and more. Those who blindly support them without taking a deep look into whether their actual policies are consistent and rational and further their goals are no different from religious fanatics who stand by ancient scripture while ignoring thousands of years of progress. I support user freedom. I support users having control over their own devices, knowledge of what software runs on them, and knowledge of what choices are available so they can make an informed decision. I spend most of my time working on reverse engineering and porting Linux to proprietary hardware (Apple M1) so users have the freedom to run whatever OS they want. I cannot support the FSF, an organization which supports censoring security vulnerability warnings when fixing them involves updating proprietary firmware (that already exists anyway); that supports burying proprietary firmware in non-introspectable read-only memory because then they can "pretend it's hardware", then selling the result as "fully libre" (even though the same device with the same firmware visible and accessible to the user would be much more free and transparent, allowing introspection, auditing, and replacement with a free alternative); that supports physically destroying hardware components that presently require a proprietary driver to function, ignoring the possibility that free software drivers might appear in the future. These are real FSF policies and actions. This is what you are supporting when you support the FSF. It's not user freedom any more. It's religious nonsense like "blobs in /lib/firmware are bad, we can't have any blobs be out in the clear".