that old GNU/Linux argument

[Antonio Olivares]

> > It is a war.
> 
> Indeed.  A war for freedom for all software users.  A war
> that started
> back in 1983, and whose proponents have suffered many
> threats and
> losses, but also several wins.
> 
> One of the greatest threats these days are people who just
> don't care
> about freedom, who just want to use the software and who
> would love to
> sacrifice whatever freedom was already achieved for some
> temporary
> convenience.  People who will fight vigorously against any
> attempt to
> educate others about these issues.

I care for freedom.  I just don't care for attaching the name GNU to Linux like in GNU/Linux. It does not make sense to me, because of many reasons I have posted before.  Other projects will ask that you attach their names as well and this could become a problem in not being able to satisfy all of the peoples' egos.  

It already is there, users have to type 
$ uname -o
in a command line terminal.  If they do this, they get what you want :)
> 
>   They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
> temporary
>   safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Ben
> Franklin, freedom
>   fighter
> 
> > A war between the FSF who want the GNU part attached
> to Linux
It is a continuation of the disputes but now moved over here

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2006-August/msg00101.html

> 
> This is just a smaller battle, not the war.  Your choice of
> words is
> quite poor and extremely unfair.  The FSF is not the only
> one who
> makes this request and works for software freedom or on the
> GNU
> project, and nobody is requesting to have their own names
> attached to
> Linux.  Linux is a kernel.  
Yes it is, it is also a Distribution composed of GNU parts and non GNU parts. 
> All we ask for is to have the
> name of the
> operating system created to give people freedom back where
> it should
> always have been: on the operating system that people chose
> to run on
> top of the kernel Linux.
Where it should have/could have/would have
shouda/woulda/coulda but it isn't.  Well it is, just users have to type in a terminal shell

$ uname -o 

and they will get what you want, and RMS wants as well :)
> 
> -- 

The effort you and others have put up here could be better spent requiring that Linux Distributions mandatorily add the GNU/ tag to Linux.

Debian GNU/Linux already does this, ask Slackware, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, PC/GNU/LinuxOS, Gentoo, Sabayon, Sidux, ..., all the Distros at Distrowatch except the *BSDs and OpenSolaris to add the tag.  My guess is that they do when one does  

[olivares at localhost ~]$ uname -o
GNU/Linux
[olivares at localhost ~]$ uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.25.11-97.fc9.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Jul 21 01:09:10 EDT 2008 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

They should get what you want.  Is that enough?  Was that too hard to do?  
As much as I would like to remove it, I have found a way using sed, and sed is part of GNU

[olivares at localhost ~]$ uname -o > uname-o
[olivares at localhost ~]$ sed -e 's/GNU\/Linux/Linux/g' uname-o
Linux
[olivares at localhost ~]$ 

What good does that do?  Nothing GNU/Linux is still there, I just suppressed its output using sed.  

BTW, other places also argue about GNU/Linux.  

One is here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-technology/8721-gnu-linux-vs-linux.html


Linux                                       12  30.00%
GNU/Linux                                    8  20.00%
Makes no difference but I prefer Linux      19  47.50%
Makes no difference but I prefer GNU/Linux   1  2.50%

What do you think of that?  Does it make sense?  

Regards,

Antonio