"Alfred M. Szmidt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > In 1985, the FSF started to ship tapes and began to receive > donations. The GNU OS (to be known later as HURD) was > progressing and most and more gaps were filled in its > architecture. > > The GNU operating system was never known as the Hurd. The Hurd was > a specific part of the GNU system, much like Emacs, GCC, etc. The > GNU operating system has always been simply known as GNU. > > History revisonism seems to be quite fun, even for articles from 1997.
[...] If you look through old documents, you'll find that "GNU" is used as a project name consistently. As a project name for the whole operating system, yes. UNIX was a operating system, and GNU was to be a "Unix-compatible software system". Also "GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems.", and "GNU will remove operating system software from the realm of competition.". We also have "When the kernel and compiler are finished, it will be possible to distribute a GNU system suitable for program development." This is from the GNU manifesto. At the time frame in question, "operating system" and "kernel" was used pretty much synonymously in computer science circles. Again, incorrect. Maybe you are to young to remeber these things, but the definition of kernel and operating system has always been blurry in Computing Science circles. Some have included all user level programs in "operating system", some have just included what is needed to get the computer working (kernel) in the definition. But the GNU project has consitently meant a complete, working system with many tools similar to UNIX. Cheers. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
