5 ms·

In any case, RMS is absolutely right about people not giving GNU enough credit in naming or in general.

by mehrzad 12y ago

amyjess 12y ago
GNU is becoming progressively less and less important. The "killer apps" for Linux have never been GNU. Apache httpd and XFree86/Xorg are by far and above the most popular applications on Linux, and they aren't GNU projects. Graphically, GNU is at its nadir of influence. Freedesktop.org controls most cross-desktop standards, libraries, and services. GNU's own desktop environment GNOME is no longer nearly as popular as it used to be thanks to GNOME 3 being actively hostile to desktop users (and GNOME has always been part of GNU on paper only -- it's effectively a Red Hat project). On the platform side, the init system has never been GNU. While the init system has always been a minor part of the OS, this is changing thanks to systemd (also a product of freedesktop.org) getting its hooks into everything on several levels. Actually, I'd go as far as to say that freedesktop.org has far more influence on the userland than GNU does right now.
- kjs3 12y ago
  GCC and it's ecosystem is a killer app. Without it, you likely wouldn't have had the others[1], including Linux itself. [1] X existed in the before time, but it was distinctly different than XFree86.
- dec0dedab0de 12y ago
  GNU's own desktop environment GNOME I am pretty sure GNOME is separate from GNU/FSF.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    GNOME is listed under the GNU Project's software page: http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html The page http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ is a redirect to gnome.org.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    It's officially part of GNU: http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html ctrl-F "gnome" Also, http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ redirects to http://www.gnome.org http://www.gnome.org. This relationship, however, exists purely on paper. Actual governance is performed by the GNOME Foundation, whose membership consists of all contributors to the project, and most (but not all) funding comes from Red Hat. Edit: Beaten to the punch. That's what I get when I try to post and code at the same time.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    GNOME project, and its products, are the work of the GNOME Foundation [0], not GNU/FSF. GNU links to GNOME from the name "gnome" within its list of "GNU packages" [1], but GNOME is, and has been for some time, its own separate organization. GNU claims that things it lists as "GNU software" consist of software "released under the auspices of the GNU Project" [2], but that doesn't seem to apply to GNOME in any meaningful sense now, though historically GNOME was a product of the GNU project. EDITED: to reflect historical relationship noted in cwyers reply. [0] https://www.gnome.org/ https://www.gnome.org/ [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#GNUsoftware http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#GNUsoftware
    - amyjess 12y ago
      My assumption is that the FSF used to be responsible for GNOME's governance before the GNOME Foundation existed, and nobody ever bothered to update the website afterwards. That it's still listed is either stale, inaccurate data on a webpage or a relationship that only exists on paper, depending on how you look at it. Oh, and all this just underscores my point that GNU has effectively no presence in the graphical sphere except for a few scattered applications (e.g. GIMP, Emacs).
    - cwyers 12y ago
      Looking at the history: http://www.gnu.org/press/gnome-1.0.html http://www.gnu.org/press/gnome-1.0.html > The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced the release of GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) 1.0 today at the Linux World Conference. GNOME is an integrated desktop environment designed to run on GNU/Linux systems. > The Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt charity formed in 1985, is dedicated to eliminating restrictions of people's right to use, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. It does so by protecting these rights through the GNU General Public License. The aim is to give people the freedom to cooperate with other computer users. > "GNOME is a flexible GUI (Graphical User's Interface) that combines ease of use and the flexibility and reliability of GNU/Linux. We're very excited about GNOME and what it will mean for the future of GNU/Linux computing" Miguel de Icaza, chief designer of GNOME said earlier. At one point, the G in GNOME stood for GNU (now GNOME is just a name, not an acronym), and the FSF was active in its maintenance.
- cwyers 12y ago
  And GCC is losing a lot of ground to Clang/LLVM.
- rohansingh 12y ago
  Aren't these all "killer apps" for Linux? cp mv rm cat grep find ln head tail
  - vinkelhake 12y ago
    They are all readily available on a number of other operating systems.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    A canonical example of a killer app is something like Lotus 1-2-3 for the PC, or Halo for the original XBox -- something so compelling as to drive adoption of the host platform. Those are all pretty standard *IX command line utilities, not killer apps. (They're also the sort of thing that I bet someone has coded in Rust or Go over a few weekends as an exercise, and as such they're probably the EASIEST bit of GNU code to rip out of Linux at this point if you wanted a Linux without GNU.)
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > A canonical example of a killer app is something like Lotus 1-2-3 for the PC, or Halo for the original XBox -- something so compelling as to drive adoption of the host platform. True, and I don't think the listed command-line utilities do that. OTOH, I do think that that presentation hints at the truth -- the "killer apps" that are driving Linux adoption aren't a big flashy end-user-facing 1-2-3 style apps, or even apps in the traditional sense, but lower-level more-technical features/tools that make developing on and for Linux attractive, or make Linux attractive for use in cloud deployments, etc.
      - cwyers 12y ago
        In my opinion, the "killer apps" for Linux (aside from the Apache httpd that amyjess mentioned) are: * A mostly Unix-like OS that runs on available commodity hardware, rather than requiring you to buy a SPARC, Alpha or POWER machine, you can buy a commodity x86 machine and use that instead. Because of economies of scale, commodity hardware is always going to be cheaper. * Low (really no) licensing cost. The traditional model of scaling was that when your computer wasn't fast enough, you bought a faster computer. Linux's licensing model makes it affordable to scale horizontally -- to have lots of "slow" computers provide the same computing capacity as one big computer. In a "buy a computer and you have to buy my UNIX" world, any savings you can achieve by scaling out instead of up are offset by software licensing costs. Not in a Linux world, though.
- kllrnohj 12y ago
  The single most widely used distro of Linux, Android, does not use XFree86/Xorg. Indeed it uses almost nothing from GNU or freedesktop.org
  - cwyers 12y ago
    Android using the Linux kernel doesn't make it a Linux distro any more than Linux using GNU code in its userland makes Linux the GNU operating system. (Or put another way, nobody thinks that iOS is "the most widely used BSD.")
    - feedjoelpie 12y ago
      >Android using the Linux kernel doesn't make it a Linux distro any more than... Um, actually that's exactly what makes it a Linux distro. That's the one defining feature of a Linux distro.
    - kllrnohj 12y ago
      Well, iOS uses the XNU kernel which has Mach as its basis, not BSD. It uses a lot of parts of the FreeBSD kernel, though, but it's definitely not tracking upstream FreeBSD the same way that Android is.
cwyers 12y ago
The GNU project tried to build an entire operating system. They published the parts they had built under the GPL. After Linus built his kernel, he and others started to use it, the GPL'd utilities from GNU and source from other places to build an entire operating system. That operating system is NOT the one that the GNU project was trying to build, and nowhere in the terms of the GPL does it say that by using this code you are required to give us credit or put us in the name. And I don't think RMS's concern is that he wants credit. I think he wants a GNU operating system to further certain goals he has, and since a GNU operating system doesn't exist, he wants to make Linux that operating system and have Linux further his goals. But adopting GNU's utilities and even the GPLv2 has not made the people building the Linux kernel or most of the prominent Linux distributions adopt GNU's politics, and that's what all the sturm and drang about the name is really about.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> In any case, RMS is absolutely right about people not giving GNU enough credit in naming or in general. If RMS wanted acknowledgement as a precondition for using components developed/maintained by GNU (or derivatives of those components), he should have included such a provision in the licensing of the components. Its hardly as if RMS is a stranger to using licensing restrictions to achieving the world he wants to achieve.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  Time was, gpl advocates would get all het up over the version of bsd that required derivative projects add in an acknowledgement statement, because making them do that was unfree.
  - apenguin 12y ago
    If this[1] is what you're referring to, it's because the acknowledgements would make things needlessly wordy. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html
    - kjs3 12y ago
      So it's verbosity alone that makes "GNU/Linux" not just acceptable but morally required but "This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors." just beyond the pale. That explains a lot about RMS.
tzs 12y ago
Historically, the people who put together a complete operating system have been free to name it whatever they want, and they generally did not use the name as a place to give credit for the components they included in their operating system. The historically accurate way to view "GNU system" and "GNU/Linux" is as specifications, much like POSIX or the Single Unix Specification. An operating system can be said to be a "GNU system" or a "GNU/Linux" system if the meets the specifications for those, but that doesn't mean the maker of the operating system has to incorporate that into the name.

In any case, RMS is absolutely right about people not giving GNU enough credit in naming or in general.

by mehrzad 12y ago

In any case, RMS is absolutely right about people not giving GNU enough credit in naming or in general.

GNU is becoming progressively less and less important. The "killer apps" for Linux have never been GNU. Apache httpd and XFree86/Xorg are by far and above the most popular applications on Linux, and they aren't GNU projects. Graphically, GNU is at its nadir of influence. Freedesktop.org controls most cross-desktop standards, libraries, and services. GNU's own desktop environment GNOME is no longer nearly as popular as it used to be thanks to GNOME 3 being actively hostile to desktop users (and GNOME has always been part of GNU on paper only -- it's effectively a Red Hat project). On the platform side, the init system has never been GNU. While the init system has always been a minor part of the OS, this is changing thanks to systemd (also a product of freedesktop.org) getting its hooks into everything on several levels. Actually, I'd go as far as to say that freedesktop.org has far more influence on the userland than GNU does right now.

kjs3 12y ago
GCC and it's ecosystem is a killer app. Without it, you likely wouldn't have had the others[1], including Linux itself. [1] X existed in the before time, but it was distinctly different than XFree86.
dec0dedab0de 12y ago
GNU's own desktop environment GNOME I am pretty sure GNOME is separate from GNU/FSF.
- cwyers 12y ago
  GNOME is listed under the GNU Project's software page: http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html The page http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ is a redirect to gnome.org.
- amyjess 12y ago
  It's officially part of GNU: http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html ctrl-F "gnome" Also, http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ redirects to http://www.gnome.org http://www.gnome.org. This relationship, however, exists purely on paper. Actual governance is performed by the GNOME Foundation, whose membership consists of all contributors to the project, and most (but not all) funding comes from Red Hat. Edit: Beaten to the punch. That's what I get when I try to post and code at the same time.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  GNOME project, and its products, are the work of the GNOME Foundation [0], not GNU/FSF. GNU links to GNOME from the name "gnome" within its list of "GNU packages" [1], but GNOME is, and has been for some time, its own separate organization. GNU claims that things it lists as "GNU software" consist of software "released under the auspices of the GNU Project" [2], but that doesn't seem to apply to GNOME in any meaningful sense now, though historically GNOME was a product of the GNU project. EDITED: to reflect historical relationship noted in cwyers reply. [0] https://www.gnome.org/ https://www.gnome.org/ [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#GNUsoftware http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#GNUsoftware
  - amyjess 12y ago
    My assumption is that the FSF used to be responsible for GNOME's governance before the GNOME Foundation existed, and nobody ever bothered to update the website afterwards. That it's still listed is either stale, inaccurate data on a webpage or a relationship that only exists on paper, depending on how you look at it. Oh, and all this just underscores my point that GNU has effectively no presence in the graphical sphere except for a few scattered applications (e.g. GIMP, Emacs).
  - cwyers 12y ago
    Looking at the history: http://www.gnu.org/press/gnome-1.0.html http://www.gnu.org/press/gnome-1.0.html > The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced the release of GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) 1.0 today at the Linux World Conference. GNOME is an integrated desktop environment designed to run on GNU/Linux systems. > The Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt charity formed in 1985, is dedicated to eliminating restrictions of people's right to use, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. It does so by protecting these rights through the GNU General Public License. The aim is to give people the freedom to cooperate with other computer users. > "GNOME is a flexible GUI (Graphical User's Interface) that combines ease of use and the flexibility and reliability of GNU/Linux. We're very excited about GNOME and what it will mean for the future of GNU/Linux computing" Miguel de Icaza, chief designer of GNOME said earlier. At one point, the G in GNOME stood for GNU (now GNOME is just a name, not an acronym), and the FSF was active in its maintenance.
cwyers 12y ago
And GCC is losing a lot of ground to Clang/LLVM.
rohansingh 12y ago
Aren't these all "killer apps" for Linux? cp mv rm cat grep find ln head tail
- vinkelhake 12y ago
  They are all readily available on a number of other operating systems.
- cwyers 12y ago
  A canonical example of a killer app is something like Lotus 1-2-3 for the PC, or Halo for the original XBox -- something so compelling as to drive adoption of the host platform. Those are all pretty standard *IX command line utilities, not killer apps. (They're also the sort of thing that I bet someone has coded in Rust or Go over a few weekends as an exercise, and as such they're probably the EASIEST bit of GNU code to rip out of Linux at this point if you wanted a Linux without GNU.)
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > A canonical example of a killer app is something like Lotus 1-2-3 for the PC, or Halo for the original XBox -- something so compelling as to drive adoption of the host platform. True, and I don't think the listed command-line utilities do that. OTOH, I do think that that presentation hints at the truth -- the "killer apps" that are driving Linux adoption aren't a big flashy end-user-facing 1-2-3 style apps, or even apps in the traditional sense, but lower-level more-technical features/tools that make developing on and for Linux attractive, or make Linux attractive for use in cloud deployments, etc.
    - cwyers 12y ago
      In my opinion, the "killer apps" for Linux (aside from the Apache httpd that amyjess mentioned) are: * A mostly Unix-like OS that runs on available commodity hardware, rather than requiring you to buy a SPARC, Alpha or POWER machine, you can buy a commodity x86 machine and use that instead. Because of economies of scale, commodity hardware is always going to be cheaper. * Low (really no) licensing cost. The traditional model of scaling was that when your computer wasn't fast enough, you bought a faster computer. Linux's licensing model makes it affordable to scale horizontally -- to have lots of "slow" computers provide the same computing capacity as one big computer. In a "buy a computer and you have to buy my UNIX" world, any savings you can achieve by scaling out instead of up are offset by software licensing costs. Not in a Linux world, though.
kllrnohj 12y ago
The single most widely used distro of Linux, Android, does not use XFree86/Xorg. Indeed it uses almost nothing from GNU or freedesktop.org
- cwyers 12y ago
  Android using the Linux kernel doesn't make it a Linux distro any more than Linux using GNU code in its userland makes Linux the GNU operating system. (Or put another way, nobody thinks that iOS is "the most widely used BSD.")
  - feedjoelpie 12y ago
    >Android using the Linux kernel doesn't make it a Linux distro any more than... Um, actually that's exactly what makes it a Linux distro. That's the one defining feature of a Linux distro.
  - kllrnohj 12y ago
    Well, iOS uses the XNU kernel which has Mach as its basis, not BSD. It uses a lot of parts of the FreeBSD kernel, though, but it's definitely not tracking upstream FreeBSD the same way that Android is.

cwyers 12y ago

The GNU project tried to build an entire operating system. They published the parts they had built under the GPL. After Linus built his kernel, he and others started to use it, the GPL'd utilities from GNU and source from other places to build an entire operating system. That operating system is NOT the one that the GNU project was trying to build, and nowhere in the terms of the GPL does it say that by using this code you are required to give us credit or put us in the name. And I don't think RMS's concern is that he wants credit. I think he wants a GNU operating system to further certain goals he has, and since a GNU operating system doesn't exist, he wants to make Linux that operating system and have Linux further his goals. But adopting GNU's utilities and even the GPLv2 has not made the people building the Linux kernel or most of the prominent Linux distributions adopt GNU's politics, and that's what all the sturm and drang about the name is really about.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> In any case, RMS is absolutely right about people not giving GNU enough credit in naming or in general. If RMS wanted acknowledgement as a precondition for using components developed/maintained by GNU (or derivatives of those components), he should have included such a provision in the licensing of the components. Its hardly as if RMS is a stranger to using licensing restrictions to achieving the world he wants to achieve.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Time was, gpl advocates would get all het up over the version of bsd that required derivative projects add in an acknowledgement statement, because making them do that was unfree.
- apenguin 12y ago
  If this[1] is what you're referring to, it's because the acknowledgements would make things needlessly wordy. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html
  - kjs3 12y ago
    So it's verbosity alone that makes "GNU/Linux" not just acceptable but morally required but "This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors." just beyond the pale. That explains a lot about RMS.

tzs 12y ago

Historically, the people who put together a complete operating system have been free to name it whatever they want, and they generally did not use the name as a place to give credit for the components they included in their operating system. The historically accurate way to view "GNU system" and "GNU/Linux" is as specifications, much like POSIX or the Single Unix Specification. An operating system can be said to be a "GNU system" or a "GNU/Linux" system if the meets the specifications for those, but that doesn't mean the maker of the operating system has to incorporate that into the name.