[sword-devel] GNU and OS ideologies

[Leon Brooks]

On Monday 10 December 2001 07:07, Chris Little wrote:
> the sort of person who cavalierly
> brandishes the word "Linux" when referring to the GNU Operating System.
> Please remember that GNU is the OS; Linux is merely one of its kernels.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. (-:

A lot of the tools (binutils, gcc etc) are GNU tools. The tools are not the 
OS. A lot more of a typical Linux distribution (in some cases such as Debian, 
practically all) is _licenced_ under the GPL, the GNU licence, and/or 
copyright has been transferred to FSF, but this doesn't make them GNU either 
(in fact, that's really the central point of the GPL).

> The term "GNU/Linux" is acceptable when referring to the combination.

Or just Linux. (-: I prefer GNU+Linux but RMS doen't agree with me. :-)

> Everything you said was wrong.  Even the things you quoted, you quoted
> wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Ooooh! (-:

But in general, I agree with what you said.

Free is an unfortunate word in English. I generally use free-libre and 
free-gratis when I have to distinguish, but I hadn't thought about 
free-worthless. Thanks for bringing that up.

Free-gratis is good for people who ``can't afford'' a Bible (and I quote that 
because for many of us it's only a matter of priorities), and for that I also 
value http://bible.gospelcom.net/ but free-libre is what ensures that Sword 
osmoses into everywhere, can be worked on by anyone, and so will not die even 
if the entire developer community is jailed or have their premises trashed 
for distributing subversive literature (do we have any Mexican developers on 
the list?).

Cheers; Leon