2006/10/11, Devdas Bhagat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
BSD. They require gcc, but everything else is non GNU. As far as I am concerned, GNU is _one_ component of my system. A lot of other components use the GNU toolchain to exist, but practically, if those applications didn't exist, I might as well not use the computer.
that is the point. if those application dont exist without GNU, and there is nothing left useful for you on the computer without it, you have proved that GNU is indispensable. However, this is true only if you want to stick to free software. Otherwise GNU is dispensible anyway.
So me crediting just GNU would be wrong. IBM/QT/Apache/Artistic/Mozilla/X/BSD/GNU/Linux would be acceptable (off the top of my head, those are the licenses used by software on my system).
You are diverting the attention to licenses again. What about all those things that are listed above, do they not depend on gcc for their *free* existence? You may compile them with a non-free ANSI-C compiler, to demonstrate to me that GCC is dispensible. In order to show me your independence from GNU you became dependent on a proprietary thing. That is why I said, GNU is a core contribution for the existence of free software, whatever be the licenses they are all released. This dependency is also for the Linux kernel, and other free kernels. As most of you know C is the core of any Unix. They are born together. This dependency is a factual relation, it is either true or not. Why hesitate to tell the truth? It is possible to write a program, release it under some other license, but you are still depending on GNU. Licenses dont tell you the dependencies. If the dependency is true, GNU is the core of the userland, not just one of them. If the dependency is true, why hesitate to credit the core contribution. So, my thesis is, dispensing GNU will also take away your freedom. Nagarjuna -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
