a long rebuttal to the Linux-is-the-engine fallacy

[Les]

On Sat, 2008-07-26 at 09:44 -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jul 26, 2008, Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > http://www.cmake.org/HTML/index.html
> 
> > That one should suffice.
> 
> Nope.  It offers the features, and even in a desirable fashion, but it
> doesn't preclude anyone from rewriting all the intelligence encoded in
> configure.ac and Makefile.am into a format that cmake can understand.
> And *that's* the huge task.  Rewriting autoconf, automake and libtool,
> in spite of big a large undertaking, pales on the face of dropping GNU
> autotools code from all projects you might want to include in a
> GNU-less distro.
> 
> > If it does not, we will look for another one, but there have to be
> > some out there :)
> 
> Why?  If Linux folks didn't bother rewriting a majority of their
> operating system, because it was already implemented and readily
> available in the GNU porject, why would they have bothered with
> rewriting a much smaller piece of it?
> 
Ah! and here's the rub... If it is truly free, and follows the intent,
then this last paragraph is the key to debunking the whole thing about
free software.  If it is really free, why does this last paragraph
belong in your argument?

Regards,
Les H