I can't read GNU web pages without getting frustrated.
Mon Jul 4th 17:06:44 2005
This is old news, but a link posted on a forum in someone's signature reminded me that RMS can be quite a jealous dweeb (yeah, I said dweeb). He wrote this gigantic page all about why we should say "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux" when referring to the entire operating system. You've got to be frickin' kidding me. His justification is that Linux is just a kernel, "GNU/Linux" is the entire operating system with all the tools.
First off, even if I did feel like making the name of my favorite operating system longer by adding three letters, a punctuation character and an extra syllable, I would certainly put the kernel first. It gets loaded first, so why not?
Second, you never hear him trying to claim GNU/Solaris even though a lot of the tools on Solaris are GNU. Besides, it's each distro's choice whether or not to put GNU tools into the mix. They could just as easily develop something on their own. If I include some unheard-of GNU tool in a software package I release, am I supposed to call it GNU/Whatever?
And what's next? X/GNU/Linux? X is one of the biggest reasons -- maybe one of the only -- Linux or any Unix is so popular with systems other than servers these days. And why stop there? How about X/GNU/Mozilla/OpenOffice/SSH/Linux? These are all very important tools. But let the distro makers call it what they want.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of GNU and what they stand for. Open-source (not "free" -- I dislike ambiguous adjectives unless I'm trying to be funny, and I'm not) software is important and will strengthen the Computer Science field overall. But, honestly, I feel that he's just pissing on the wheel of progress. Just concentrate on the code.