On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 10:41:46AM +0100, Mathieu Roy wrote: > You are currently saying that the GNU in GNU/Linux is justified by the > glibc and not by any other GNU software, because these GNU software > are common on other unixes.
Maybe what he was saying, but that's obviously not the real issue. <recap>The original reason for the change from "Linux" to "GNU/Linux" was that: the kernel was developed and built with gcc AND libc was gnu AND most of the system tools in userland were gnu AND the developers involved were not rabidly anti-gnu (though the switch did flush a bit of rabid anti-gnu sentiment out of the community).</recap> The bsd port is still mostly vapor, so it's kinda hard to figure out how much of the above is relevant. Thus, knowing whether "GNU" is appropriate (or whether a de-emphasized lower case "gnu" is appropriate) is more a matter of speculation than a matter of hard fact. Moreover, this speculation touches on a lot of issues (aesthetics, us vs. them group dynamics, incompatibilities, bugs, and the hard technical work of a very few) which mean we'll probably be seeing echos of this supposed trademark discussion for years. I've even contributed to it a bit myself -- it's an easy discussion to jump into, even though it's not really a well defined problem. > If we follow your theory, it means that if someday another system use > the glibc, we should remove the GNU from the GNU/Linux name. We don't, as a general rule, follow theories very far. Theories are a good starting point, but they have to stand up to testing. That said, I could wish for the gnu glibc crew to have a more up-to-date website [forinstance]. -- Raul