What is Digg?Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
See the new YouTube feature trailer for Dragon Age: Origins view!
youtube.com/DragonAge - EA presents BioWare's new dark fantasy epic Dragon Age: Origins. '9/10' from Game Informer.
67 Comments
- r121, on 10/12/2007, -1/+29I agree, GNU is a very important part of what we (myself included) commonly refer to as just Linux. But just where do you stop? Traditionally, you interacted with your Linux kernel through use of the GNU utilities and libraries, so the name GNU/Linux made sense. But now, people generally interact with the system through use of the X Server and their choice of desktop environment, and it's associated libraries and programs. Should I now call my operating system KDE/GNU/Linux? Gnome/GNU/Linux? I'm sorry, but after a while, I'm just going to shorten it to Linux.
- proton, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18This argument is old and tired. No normal person is going to call it GNU/Linux just like no normal person is going to start saying "Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm)" instead of "Windows" or "Apple Macintosh OS X" instead of "Mac".
- zagi1, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Well I hate to sound like a purist but there are some reasons why its more appropriate to call the whole operating system GNU instead of just Linux because
GNU started before Linux
GNU was aiming to include a kernel (Hurd) but the project was slow in development
People can't do anything with just the Linux kernel they need software to use an OS.
Giving FSF more credit then just one man(Linus) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Hmm this article is not very informative. The Wikipedia article is much more informative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy
This is really old anyway, doesn't everyone already know about this? - hansivers, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14I can understand why, in day-to-day use, most people called this OS simply "Linux".. but in official doc, websites, etc., i still think there is place to give proper credits and called this OS "GNU/Linux".
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8To be fair, the article in question is a featured article, so it is accurate ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_a_featured_article ). But you're right, and I think most would agree. In the words of Jimmy Wales:
"No, I don't think people should cite it, and I don't think people should cite Britannica, either -- the error rate there isn't very good. People shouldn't be citing encyclopedias in the first place. Wikipedia and other encyclopedias should be solid enough to give good, solid background information to inform your studies for a deeper level. And really, it's more reliable to read Wikipedia for background than to read random Web pages on the Internet." - Strahd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Wikipedia in and of itself is not something I would cite in formal research (I can say the same of any encyclopedia though). However as a jumping-off point to learn about new things and find other sources of information it is great.
- spytromics, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10The problem with Stallman is that while he talks about free software, he constantly seeks to impose ego-centric restrictions. Stallman attacks any sort of free licensing that isn't his GPL. He then feels that every GPL licensed piece of software is beholden to him, the god of free software.
Stallman needs to quit acting like a spoiled child and realize that while he did organize an initial effort to make freely available ports of SED, AWK, GREP, etc., he failed miserably as a project manager. The GNU software utilities only became usable when Torvalds and his Linux team took over project management.
Today's GPL licensed software will never be free and open until a new license is devised that does not implicitly worship Stallman. - ImOscar, on 10/12/2007, -14/+20When did Wikipedia become a cite-able source?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9It seems to me that the question shouldn't be whether or not to include GNU in the name, but whether or not to include Linux in the name. Do we call Windows XP, "Windows XP/NT"? Nope. We call it Windows XP--the operating system, not the kernel. Linus has very little to do with the development of "Linux" distrobutions, yet people keep citing him on stuff like what HE wants to see happen with operating systems based on Linux. For instance, Digg had an article on Linus telling some guy to tell developers to use KDE rather than Gnome. Regardless of which you like better, who cares what the kernel guy says?
Of course, I just avoid the whole thing by calling it simply "Ubuntu" or "Kanotix", refraining from using the misnomer Linux as best I can. - mancat, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I don't really care about what GNU zealots would like me to call it. They have pulled in plenty of code from BSD/MIT/etc licensed projects and fail to acknowledge it. There are many other pieces of software in almost every Linux distribution that have been produced by projects or individuals who are not aligned with the GNU project or its philosophy in the slightest - they just believe in open-source software, without the politics.
Linux isn't purely GNU. I don't need to include GNU in the name. - The_Decryptor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7What we are talking about are the kernels, nobody refers to Windows as ntoskrnl, and nobody refers to OS X as Mach/XNU, yet "everybody" refers to GNU/Linux, as Linux.
- bieber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Why does everyone think this is about Stallman's ego? What it's all about is the fact that when using "Linux" people associate it with Linus, and his philosophy, which is that all software licenses are basically acceptable, and that "Open Source" software just happens to be more effective. The Free Software Foundation has taken a big hit from Linux, in that many people are now perfectly content with their "Linux" systems, and don't even know what "GNU" is, let alone its philosophy.
- mancat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5By late 1993, all of the legal issues surrounding the BSD codebase were resolved with AT&T. At that point, it would have been entirely feasible to use the BSD kernel with a GNU userland, or vice versa.
In 1991 though, no other freely-available kernel existed. Minix was a joke, and so was Linux for a few years. The GNU tools were already fairly mature at this point though; people had been using GNU cc, grep, sed, tar, etc. as more functional drop-in replacements on other Unix systems for years. - gopal, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Don't you think GNU/Linux is different than Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh? Microsoft and Apple is/are a single company. GNU is FSF, while Linux is the trademark of Linus.
Since a majority of the important pieces of software that is included with GNU/Linux is from FSF, why can't FSF be given the credit.
RMS doesn't ask you to call it RMS/Linux, did he? - CarzorStelatis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Does anyone outside of the FSF actually give a damn about this? Whether you call it 'Linux' or 'GNU/Linux' people still know what you're talking about. It's like arguing over whether to refer to the USA as 'America' or 'the United States'.
- jbno, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Lots of the points people make in this discussion are addressed quite well by the GNU/Linux naming FAQ -- http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html -- I highly recommend reading it.
In particular:
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#windows
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#bsd
all address programs commonly used with GNU/Linux and the names of other operating systems. - jdog1016, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There are lots of operating systems that use GNU software, the BSD's being among them. And yet no one says GNU/FreeBSD. Now why is that?
- bieber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4spytromics, what the ***** are you talking about? The GNU utilities have long been completely functional, and were used frequently as replacements for their proprietary Unix counterparts long before Linux came around. And what can possibly be _more_ free and open than the GPL, except maybe the new GPL? Unless, of course, by free and open, you mean that anyone who wants can take massive amounts of work done freely by the community, add some proprietary code to it, and then release it to the public without any freedom at all.
- Hindu_Wardrobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If I were to say that my computer was running a completely GNU OS, I would be lying. I'm using the proprietary nVidia drivers. Proprietary != GNU.
So call it what you want, but I'm calling it "Linux". - jbno, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"The problem with Stallman is that while he talks about free software, he constantly seeks to impose ego-centric restrictions."
Ironically, the name "Linux" is the egocentrism that goes unacknowledged. The name refers to one man, Linus Torvalds, and is frequently miscited as though he wrote an entire operating system. Torvalds does nothing to correct interviewers of this nowadays, but he once told a Wired interviewer that even he thought the name was egocentric. I guess the days of recognizing the humility of working on a team and being replaceable are over.
"Stallman attacks any sort of free licensing that isn't his GPL."
Please back this up with specific references.
"Stallman needs to quit acting like a spoiled child and realize that while he did organize an initial effort to make freely available ports of SED, AWK, GREP, etc., he failed miserably as a project manager. The GNU software utilities only became usable when Torvalds and his Linux team took over project management."
Actually, Stallman was the initial co-author of GNU Emacs (along with Guy Pierce, as I understand it) and Stallman is the initial author of what came to be known as the GNU Compiler Collection (originally the GNU C Compiler, but it came to work with so many programming languages the name didn't fit anymore). So, these two programs alone along with being the chief author of all versions of the GNU GPL (the most popular free software license) give him very little company for being an influential hacker. Many OSes are compiled entirely with GCC, and GNU Emacs is still in wide use as a very functional editor and programming environment. Certainly Linus Torvalds' work doesn't compare, as Torvalds' only work of importance is being the initial author of the Linux kernel and, of importance chiefly to developers, the Git program.
The GNU utilities you refer to were in widespread use on a variety of proprietary OSes before the GNU/Linux OS was in use (and still are). In fact, they were used by choice because they handled bad input and large volumes of input so much better than their alternatives.
"Today's GPL licensed software will never be free and open until a new license is devised that does not implicitly worship Stallman."
This is nonsensical because the FSF and Open Source Initiative both approve of the GNU GPL v2. - Gdjrptryjg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The thing is that people don't know what GNU/Linux is. They might know what Linux is, but have probably no idea what GNU is. That is wrong because GNU is at least as important part of the GNU/Linux system as Linux is. People have no idea that there is some sort of mission connected to the software they are using, that is software freedom. They will never hear the philosophy behind the software.
- alandd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6The whole discussion is lame and irrelevant. The efforts to "change" the name to GNU/Linux are a vehicle for educating people about GNU and the GPL but other than that are a waste of time. Here is why:
- A project or product or company gets a very small window right after it's inception to establish it's name. To get mind share, if you will.
- Once that is done, the name stays and almost any effort to change the mind share will fail.
- The Linux kernel project acquired more mind share among geeks because it provided them with a platform on which to run the GNU utilities without having to pay for a Unix. That was a big deal!
-- Example: "Hey, want to run Unix at home? Download Linux. All the GNU tools work on it!" So Linux became the hero and got the market mind share even though the GNU project was first.
- GNU missed being the bigger hero because they had no kernel.
- Without a massive, expensive and popular marketing effort, and some sort of major gaff from the Linux kernel developers, GNU will NEVER take the mind share from Linux. They missed the window.
And now with non-geeks learning about and starting to use Linux, with big business (IBM, Red Hat, Novell, etc.) promoting the term "Linux" I see know way that the term "GNU/Linux" will ever catch on.
Maybe on principal "GNU/Linux" is the "right" name. Doesn't matter because realistically it will forever be known as Linux, a kernel and various OSes. Discussion of right or wrong is purely academic. - tobsterius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Did anyone else have a hard time reading that article? It's not well written at all..
Aside from that, I'm not so sure what Stallman's argument is here. If he feels it should be called GNU/Linux, then call it GNU/Linux, for the rest of the world, saying GNU/Linux everytime you're talking about the operating system is cumbersome. - bieber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Well, if you're using GNOME, you _are_ interacting with the Kernel through GNU. Hell, if you have all the standard GNU utilities at the core, which basically all "Linux" distributions do, you're using GNU.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Are you on crack?
When did an 'article' by one guy become a citeable source? What if the article was written by 5 people? And that's what wikipedia is... an article written by many people.
I've seen so many articles about wikipedia and almost all of them have errors about it. What is the average time of 'correction' for those articles? - neondiet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Not only that but most people you say it too will just go: "huh, is that another kind of linux then?"
I've just got to the stage where most of my non-techie friends have heard of Linux and know roughly what it is. If I tried changing the name now to GNU/Linux they'd get terribly confused. I'd have to go into loads of detail about the difference between the kernel and libraries and tools and compilers and licensing, yada, yada, yada. And I just know that most of their eyes would glaze over; they'd develop nervous glances towards the door, and internally promise themselves never, ever, ever to ask me a computer related question again.
Hmm, come to think of it, that might not be such a bad thing. - Strahd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yeah, like it or not "Linux" is the de facto term people are using to describe the OS. It's not accurate and it'd be the equivalent of calling my Chevrolet truck a "Vortec"(the engine name).
How are you going to stop it though? Xerox doesn't like it when I say I'm "Xeroxing" some documents on a non-Xerox copier and Rollerblade doesn't like it when I go "Rollerblading" instead of "in-line skating". But good luck getting people to stop using those words. To the unwashed masses (me included), it is and always will be Linux (if they even know what that is). - zagi1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If its too cumbersome to call it GNU/Linux we can start calling it "LiGNUx"
- bieber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Since when is GNOME, a part of the GNU Project, not GPL'd?
- maino82, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I agree. Stallman needs to get off his high horse and realize that people are going to call it what they want to call it. There are more important things to be worrying about that whether or not you're getting credit for something, like, say, making sure things work? Personally, if I had a hand in creating something that hundreds of thousands of people all over the world were benefiting from, I would be happy with that alone. But hey, that's just me. Maybe I need to work on beefing up my ego.
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4And what, pray would you use the Linux kernal for by itself without all the accompanying GNUware? Stallman can be an annoying guy, but in terms of strict nomenclature when writing an article etc. GNU/Linux is fine.
- Llan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's the same thing as with digg. If a story is submitted three times on three days, and makes it to the front page, some people cry dupe and the rest doesn't care. What most people digg is what counts.
Most people call it Linux, everyone knows what is talked about and so every word said about whatever was first is completely wasted breath/fingertip. - argoff, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I think that the real issue is that when others refuse to promote freedom and liberty as an end in itself, then it eventually creates problems that hurt all of us. The real value of GNU/Linux from the beginning had little to do with technology, and everything to do with freedom to use and modify without being sued. That freedom should be embraced, but instead is often shamed as being emotionally irrational and anti corporate. Well neither is true - we should really be standing up for ourselves.
- Jessehk, on 10/12/2007, -8/+10Agree completely. Wikipedia may be useful for getting an initial introduction to the topic (and in this way it is very useful), but I would never rely on the information I found there.
The fact that you and erusan are being modded down is ridiculous. - GrendelT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I didn't know this was a controversy...
a n00b misnomer possibly, but not a true "controversy". - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Except that Linus was going to call it "Freax" (bleh) and Ari Lemmke apparently created the name as the directory on the FTP server where the project files went. It could still be argued that Linus should make a greater effort to make clear that he didn't write the whole thing, but even so... you can't blame him for the Linux name.
"Freax".... I know that marketers are scum, but really, thank $DEITY that name was never used. Linus should stick to coding and project management. (^_^) - einfeldt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have traveled to Spain, Brazil, Germany, and Scotland to talk with people about stuff like this. I have notice that people in Latin America and Spain tend to prefer to use the term "software libre" (Spanish for free software) and GNU/Linux, as opposed to people in the US, Canada, the UK, and Germany prefer "Linux." IMHO, it's a cultural thing. People who are more interested in talking about freedom will say "GNU/Linux." People who are more interested in kick ass software will say open source. But both are part of the same family. If people looked at it as a cultural thing, everyone would get a long better, IMHO. I wrote an article about this for Free Software Magazine, if you would like to read it:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_software_advantage - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2AFAIK the misspelling of kernel originally comes from Commodore who spelled it "kernal" on the C64. Might be wrong on that, but IIRC that's what it was.
- micro506, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I don't know about anybody else, but I tend to use both names. When I'm talking about it formally, I'll say GNU/Linux. From then on, I'd probably just refer to it as Linux. Honestly, it's not really THAT big of a deal.
- noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wikipedia is as good as its own citations and references, which is why it needs more of a fetish in that area.
- jbno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"[...]but even so... you can't blame him [Linus Torvalds] for the Linux name."
From one of Torvalds' interviews in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//5.08/linux_pr.html):
"This fledgling system would have been short-lived had Linus not mentioned it in the Minix newsgroup. His early posting prompted an offer of space on an FTP server at the Helsinki University of Technology, letting people download the first public version of Linux. "Linux was my working name," Linus says, "but if I actually used it as the official one, people would think that I was an egomaniac and wouldn't take it seriously. So I chose this very bad name: Freax" - free + freak + x. "Sick, I know." Ari Lemmke, who ran the FTP site, decided he didn't like the Freax label, so he used the working name instead."
So, no, Linus Torvalds did pick the name "Linux"; it was a working name. Lemmke merely chose from names which were available to describe the project ("Linux" or "Freax"), Lemmke did not make up the name "Linux". But even if Lemmke had made up the name "Linux" the more salient point is not addressed.
By calling an entire OS by the name "Linux" you are unjustifiably aggrandizing the name of one portion of the system to the exclusion of all others, associating the system which began in freedom with the philosophy of someone who eschews software freedom, and not distinguishing between systems which only use the Linux kernel from those that use the GNU OS with the Linux kernel. So, the name "Linux" is only meaningful in an ethical sense (giving credit where credit is due) or technical sense (we talk about the part of the system we mean to focus on) when discussing the kernel named Linux. Just as one ought to call things by their proper names when discussing the kernel, the GNU operating system ought to be called by its proper name as well. - hartree, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I propose that we all call it Richard Stallman/Linus Torvalds OS.
This has two major advantages:
First, both will have their names on it.
Second and FAR more important, it will greatly annoy anyone who actually cares about this well pounded spot of grease that might have once been a horse a decade ago. - jbno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"If the "proper" name has to give credit to all contributors, what about all the non-GNU stuff such as X and other differently-licensed utilities (not counting all the GPLed stuff which isn't associated with the GNU project per se)?"
The FSF has a response for you. It's worth reading their entire FAQ so we don't repeat the same conversations here, but for now see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many for the following:
Many other projects contributed to the system as it is today; it includes TeX, X11, Apache, Perl, and many more programs. Don't your arguments imply we have to give them credit too? (But that would lead to a name so long it is absurd.)
What we say is that you ought to give the system's principal developer a share of the credit. The principal developer is the GNU Project.
If you feel even more strongly about giving credit where it is due, you might feel that some secondary contributors also deserve credit in the system's name. If so, far be it from us to argue against it. If you feel that X11 deserves credit in the system's name, and you want to call the system GNU/X11/Linux, please do. If you feel that Perl simply cries out for mention, and you want to write GNU/Linux/Perl, go ahead.
Since a long name such as GNU/X11/Apache/Linux/TeX/Perl/Python/FreeCiv becomes absurd, at some point you will have to set a threshold and omit the names of the many other secondary contributions. There is no one obvious right place to set the threshold, so wherever you set it, we won't argue against it.
Different threshold levels would lead to different choices of name for the system. But one name that cannot result from concerns of fairness and giving credit, not for any possible threshold level, is "Linux". It can't be fair to give all the credit to one secondary contribution (Linux) while omitting the principal contribution (GNU). - joelhardi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1GNU/Linux is actually in pretty common use. It's the OS ... Linux is just the kernel. Red Hat, Slackware, SuSe and the rest are all variants of GNU/Linux, meaning they all use the indispensable things like commands, utilities and the like that actually live at gnu.org. And that's all GNU!
Stuff like xorg and Gnome (or Perl or Apache) is totally optional. And in fact most installed Linux boxes out there aren't running these things (because they're servers). But without a shell like sh or bash, and commands like ls and cat, the kernel isn't good for very much. The GNU stuff isn't optional.
The fact that GNU/Linux uses the GNU base system utils is what makes it what it is ... otherwise it would be BSD or Solaris or some other form of *nix. - Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"people had been using GNU cc, grep, sed, tar, etc. as more functional drop-in replacements on other Unix systems for years."
Not only on Unix systems, but also on non-Unix OSes like for example RISC OS (been there, done that). - Gdjrptryjg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3From http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#bsd
We don't call the BSD systems (FreeBSD, etc.) "GNU/BSD" systems, because that term does not fit the history of the BSD systems.
The BSD system was developed by UC Berkeley as non-free software in the 80s, and became free in the early 90s. A free operating system that exists today is almost certainly either a variant of the GNU system, or a kind of BSD system.
People sometimes ask whether BSD too is a variant of GNU, as GNU/Linux is. It is not. The BSD developers were inspired to make their code free software by the example of the GNU Project, and explicit appeals from GNU activists helped convince them to start, but the code had little overlap with GNU.
BSD systems today use some GNU packages, just as the GNU system and its variants use some BSD programs; however, taken as wholes, they are two different systems that evolved separately. The BSD developers did not write a kernel and add it to the GNU system, so a name like GNU/BSD would not fit the situation.
The connection between GNU/Linux and GNU is much closer, and that's why the name "GNU/Linux" is appropriate for it.
There is a version of GNU which uses the kernel from NetBSD. Its developers call it "Debian GNU/NetBSD", but "GNU/kernelofNetBSD" would be more accurate, since NetBSD is an entire system, not just the kernel. This is not a BSD system, since most of the system is the same as the GNU/Linux system. - noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Fair enough about the Linux/Freax issue. But who dictates that its "proper" name was GNU/Linux? If the "proper" name has to give credit to all contributors, what about all the non-GNU stuff such as X and other differently-licensed utilities (not counting all the GPLed stuff which isn't associated with the GNU project per se)?
My feelings? I understand the problem some people have with naming the whole OS "Linux", but GNU/Linux is no better by its own motivation since it doesn't give credit to everyone involved either. They should just have given the OS a totally different collective name, but it ain't going to happen now. - n0xie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What's in a name? :s
- Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Without GNU Linus wouldn't have been able to develop Linux in the first place.
-
Show 51 - 67 of 67 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is