Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 01:54:14PM -0700, Joel Baker wrote: On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 03:13:03PM -0500, Nathan Hawkins wrote: If we're really worried about this, we can always use the names of the Dwarves in the Hobbit. Most (all?) of those names are from Icelandic sags, IIRC. So is Gandalf. All of them. I suppose they even have enough of the right letters to do the first-letter trick, at least once per. Oin/Ori Nori Fili For instance. Regards: David Weinehall -- /) David Weinehall [EMAIL PROTECTED] /) Northern lights wander (\ // Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel // Dance across the winter sky // \) http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/(/ Full colour fire (/
Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
Branden == Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Branden Remember, outside the Free Software community, copyright is Branden used only as a destructive weapon, not a tool for promoting Branden cooperation and harmony. It looks like not only outside Free Software community, considering this very thread. ~velco
GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 05:03:55AM +, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Kevin Kreamer [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the case of a NetBSD libc, you could use Debian NBSD/NBSD basically having the first half signify which libc is used. Wouldn't that be a major retcon? AFAIU the GNU/ in Debian GNU/Linux says that we're using GNU userland tools such as cp, mv, diff, cc, make, nroff, etc. That's prominently visible to users; the libc is a technical detail that most users wouldn't care about unless it breaks. Hardly. Guess which *roff, gcc, diff, tar, etc. is there in *BSD? And considering the state of coreutils... not much to boast there. About the only thing that gives any real weight to GNU/ stuff is glibc - the rest is either common on all free Unices (and GNU doesn't see that as grounds for claim on renaming *BSD to GNU/*BSD) or... well, less than impressive, to put it mildly. IOW, about the only way GNU/Linux as a port name makes sense is what libc do we have here/what kernel does it run on. 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. Why? If you are right that others unixes uses widely GNU software, maybe they should consider recognize the GNU part of the their system. But that's a different story. 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. It does not make sense: the GNU part of the name shows that the system used is the system designed/initiated by the GNU project running with the kernel Linux, which is not part of GNU. It does not mean that there are GNU software rarely used elsewhere in the system! (Note: I'm not subscribed to debian-bsd, please keep debian-devel in Cc) -- Mathieu Roy +-+ | General Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org/ | | Computing Homepage: http://alberich.coleumes.org/ | | Not a native english speaker: | | http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english | +-+
Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 06:37:56PM -0600, Kevin Kreamer wrote: [I am not subscribed to debian-bsd.] On Dec 17, 2003, at 10:20, Branden Robinson wrote: Given that we're going to be saddled with with a comprehension problem anyway, I say we abandon the effort to be descriptive in the product name. I proposed having a correlation between the first letter of the product name and the underlying BSD variant simply as a mnemonic convenience for people who already know what the products are supposed to be. We don't have to *completely* give up the effort to be descriptive. How about just calling it: Debian GNU/NBSD Debian GNU/FBSD Debian GNU/OBSD (if there's ever an OpenBSD port) It would have the advantage of being recognizable to most people, without actually using 'NetBSD' or so anywhere in the name. [ The following suggestion is possibly flameworthy. Please consider the above separate from the below. ] In the case of a NetBSD libc, you could use Debian NBSD/NBSD basically having the first half signify which libc is used. However, if Debian is always going to use the GNU/ prefix, then perhaps make it something like Debian GNU/NBSD/NBSD with the third part signifying the libc used. I would better say that the second part be the libc, and that it can be omitted if it is the same as most userland. That said, we don't have only GNU stuff as userland. Friendly, Sven Luther
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
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.
Why? If you are right that others unixes uses widely GNU software,
maybe they should consider recognize the GNU part of the their
system. But that's a different story.
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.
Why not?
It does not make sense: the GNU part of the name shows that the system
used is the system designed/initiated by the GNU project running with
the kernel Linux, which is not part of GNU. It does not mean that
there are GNU software rarely used elsewhere in the system!
Debian had not been initiated by GNU project, IIRC. Designated is
closer to reality, but that wouldn't warrant _anything_ - after all,
gcc had been designated as a primary C compiler on a lot of systems,
but that doesn't make it {lots of organizations}/gcc. It doesn't work
in that direction - *contributor* may have a right to make demands, not
the other way round.
And yes, GNU *had* contributed stuff. The main dependency being glibc.
BTW, if you are talking about frequency of use, glibc beats everything
else by far. With X11 and assorted daemons (almost all of them coming
not from GNU) contending for the second place - depends on the type of use.
If we ever get a replacement libc that would really work as replacement...
on such system GNU claims would become much weaker. Not that there was
a serious chance of that happening - drop-in replacement of glibc on Linux
would be a lot of work and so far none of the alternative libc projects had
tried to pull that off.
Re: [OT] Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 11:26:10AM -0600, Chad Walstrom wrote: On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 04:42:28PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: Well, just for the record, i personnally would prefer we don't use demon name for keyword if possible. Forgive me for the gratuitous Harry Potter reference, but fear of a name increases fear for the thing itself. ;-p It is not about fear, just some uneasiness inside. IOW, lighten up, people. Otherwise, we'll be referring to Debian GNU/That Which Shall Not Be Named... That would be a funny naming scheme. That said, how would we then differentiate the three BSD ports ? GNU/First one that shall not be named and so one ? Friendly, Sven Luther
Re: [OT] Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
Sven == Sven Luther [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sven That would be a funny naming scheme. That said, how would we then Sven differentiate the three BSD ports ? GNU/First one that shall not be Sven named and so one ? Indeed ! GNU/First one that shall not be named GNU/Next one that shall not be named GNU/Other one that shall not be named ~velco
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
Mathieu == Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mathieu If we follow your theory, it means that if someday another Mathieu system use the glibc, we should remove the GNU from the Mathieu GNU/Linux name. FWIW, BeOS uses glibc. ~velco
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
Julian Mehnle dijo [Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 12:56:15PM +0100]: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If we ever get a replacement libc that would really work as replacement... on such system GNU claims would become much weaker. Not that there was a serious chance of that happening - drop-in replacement of glibc on Linux would be a lot of work and so far none of the alternative libc projects had tried to pull that off. Why would anyone want to replace GLIBC in the first place? To get rid of GNU in GNU/Linux? Maintainability? Many people (not me, I would lack that level of technical skills) have pointed out that glibc's code is a mess. Ability to distribute under another license? Yes, it might not be a priority in Debian (we are, after all, pro-GPL), but many people would like having a BSD-style libc for Linux... ...Or the good ol' 'Because it's there' stuff? :) Greetings, -- Gunnar Wolf - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - (+52-55)5630-9700 ext. 1366 PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23 Fingerprint: 0C79 D2D1 2C4E 9CE4 5973 F800 D80E F35A 8BB5 27AF
Re: GNU within the name
On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 12:15:37PM +0100, Mathieu Roy wrote: Why not? You said what I expected from you: you revealed that you disbelieve that the system should be called GNU/Linux. Good to know in this kind of discussion. raised brows I'm not a True Believer, if that's what you mean. Why not? I will not reply to that question, I think there is enough information on the web about that, for instance http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html You do realize that you are emulating a garden-variety bible-thumper here? When I'm told that a system is running GNU/whatever, I expect first to find there GNU coreutils, GNU bash, GNU Emacs, GNU Compiler Collection, gzip, GNU awk,GNU make, the GNU Debugger, GNU sysutils, GNU tar, GNUpg, GNU grep, GNU mailutils, GNU ncurses, GNU readline, GNU shellutils, GNU wget... These are required components of a system. The daemons you install on Oh, really? emacs: priority: optional gawk: priority: optional (BTW, mawk is required) make: priority: standard gcc et.al. ditto (at most) gdb:ditto sysutils: optional gnupg: standard mailutils: optional readline: standard shellutils: eaten by coreutils, what the hell are you talking about? wget: optional that system are not basis components, as you may well not be using them at all. Like, say it, init? Or cron/anacron/combination thereof? Or syslogd, or...? Anyway, your proposal is unrelated to the current subject: the NetBSD port of Debian GNU. Unless you are about to propose that Debian completely change it's naming policy, I think we can stop this dicussion now. As I've said, until the hell freezes and we get a drop-in replacement of glibc, it's moot - Linux-based ports will be glibc-based anyway. I'm not particulary interested in discussing the appropriate names for inexistent objects, so I'm only glad to drop that.
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 12:06:56PM +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 12:56:15PM +0100, Julian Mehnle wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If we ever get a replacement libc that would really work as replacement... on such system GNU claims would become much weaker. Not that there was a serious chance of that happening - drop-in replacement of glibc on Linux would be a lot of work and so far none of the alternative libc projects had tried to pull that off. Why would anyone want to replace GLIBC in the first place? To get rid of GNU in GNU/Linux? glibc has its problems and alternative libc implementations do exist (mostly for embedded use), but AFAIK none of them tries to become a full-blown thing. As for the reasons why somebody would do such replacement... Beats me - ask the guy who'd brought that up. IMO it's very unlikely, to put it mildly. The impression (and, frankly, not an entirely clear one) I have gotton from RMS's various comments on the naming, especially in regards to NetBSD, boil down to the following (modulo probably screwing up the capitalization, which I can never remember the rules for, and I do apologize ahead of time): GNU represents the Gnu system, running with a native (Hurd) kernel GNU/Linux is the Gnu system, using Linux as a kernel What isn't entirely clear to me, here, is just how much composes the Gnu system. It seems fairly clear to me that Robert Millan's work (which is Debian's normal core userland, GNU-based, plus GNU libc) is more or less identical to Debian's normal situation, but with a NetBSD kernel instead of Linux. Therefore, I'm fairly certain it could be called GNU/NetBSD (or, to make the NetBSD folks happier, GNU/KNetBSD) and be precisely as accurate as GNU/Linux. My porting work, however, uses the native NetBSD libc (and libm, and more or less everything coming from that particular part of the source tree). It still uses a primarily GNU-based userland (GNU coreutils instead of NetBSD cat, ls, etc; GNU compiler; GNU tar instead of NetBSD tar or pax; etc). To date, we had used GNU/NetBSD simply because it wasn't considered to be worth having the argument over, and we were still using quite a lot of GNU stuff, so figured it wasn't unreasonable to give them due credit (and that if RMS objected, saying it wasn't the Gnu system, well, we'd be quite happy to drop the GNU/ bit, of course...) None of this really applies to changing the Linux ports away from glibc, of course. But such a topic doesn't really belong on debian-bsd, anyway. -- Joel Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED],''`. Debian GNU/NetBSD(i386) porter : :' : `. `' `- pgpHtmarhjBxy.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 02:26:27PM +0200, Momchil Velikov wrote: Mathieu == Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mathieu If we follow your theory, it means that if someday another Mathieu system use the glibc, we should remove the GNU from the Mathieu GNU/Linux name. rereads Arrgh... My apologies - I've managed to misparse the quote above. Sorry. OK... That way it does make sense, but... the rest of the arguments still stands - libc has at least the same influence as the kernel and far more than which implementation of cp(1), etc. is used on the system. Anyway, that's far off-topic, so let's keep the followups off-list. Apologies for misparsing.
Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 10:13:29AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Cf. Jesux. ...which has gone for some years without attracting anyone who is both pious enough and clueful enough to develop it. I find this inverse correlation suggestive. :) Or, it could be that Jesux wasn't really meant seriously. Go to the Jesux home page and click on the word Jesux in the section title What is Jesux?. You'll see a real explanation. Given that, it's damn cool. :-) - Jimmy Kaplowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
[I am not subscribed to debian-bsd.] On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 11:33:48PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote: On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 10:24:04AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: | Demons are evil, | | Demons don't exist. Consequently, their moral value is undefinable. I claim that their moral value /is/ definable in the context of a particular mythology even if they don't exist. In the case of the Christian religion, demons are generally believed to be evil. Well, sure. It is an essential characteristic of mythological belief systems to ascribe existence to the unmeasurable, unprovable, and unfalsifiable. Since the Debian Project is a large and diverse organization, and since mythological belief systems have a tendency to be mutually contradictory, I assert that we cannot be guided by the proscriptions of any particular mythological belief system. -- G. Branden Robinson|Those who fail to remember the laws Debian GNU/Linux |of science are condemned to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |rediscover some of the worst ones. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |-- Harold Gordon signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
[ Re-adding Cc to debian-bsd, since it's a serious naming proposal ] On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 03:12:05PM -0500, Jim Penny wrote: On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:42:23 -0500 Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think daemons first showed up in the _Fiend Folio_, which means we have the British to thank for this confusion. ;-) What about Maxwell's daemon? This is usually thought to be the computer origin of the term. 19th Century. http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Daemon.html Debian Faraday, Feynman, Fermi, ... Debian Newton, Nobel, ... Debian Ohm, Oort, Oppenheimer, ... Ladies and gentlemen (and the rest of y'all, too) - I submit that this might well be a winner. For nearly every letter in the alphabet, we have multiple possibilities, a great many of whom will be casually recognizeable to any geek audience, and quite a few of whom are dead and unlikely to object. (Oh, and for those playing along, there are two other interesting letters to check...) Debian Hale, Halley, ... (jeez. Hurd folks will have so many good choices!) Debian Landau, Lawrence, Leibniz, Lorentz, ... (oh, man - Linux gets Lovelace!) Debian Mach, of course, must be reserved for a FreeBSD-on-Mach port :) -- Joel Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED],''`. Debian GNU/NetBSD(i386) porter : :' : `. `' `- pgpG2Y2fuu5jC.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 [I am not subscribed to debian-bsd.] Alle 21:13, mercoledì 17 dicembre 2003, Nathan Hawkins ha scritto: If you wanted Greek names, there are plenty of obscure nymphs, satyrs, centaurs, etc. to choose from. Here's the name index from Ovid's Metamorphoses. If the geek in you ;-) can live without Tolkien's names, take your favorite ones. http://www.tkline.freeserve.co.uk/Webworks/Website/Ovhome.htm Best Regards, Danilo - -- Danilo Piazzalunga [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Linux User #245762 | | ICQ #105550412 | Public key: search.keyserver.net ++ Fingerprint: D018 815E 8C7F 2AE2 5565 0C36 B5F6 DB20 B800 CB9F | -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/4iqytfbbILgAy58RAiEOAJ0WqecR/nbslqy2Bz8pRSeMzlRNwwCeP++s U7OEnh4I64O7nLBALVZzOP4= =6/Ur -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: GNU within the name
Mathieu Roy wrote: Erik Steffl [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Mathieu Roy wrote: ... When I'm told that a system is running GNU/whatever, I expect first to find there GNU coreutils, GNU bash, GNU Emacs, GNU Compiler Collection, gzip, GNU awk,GNU make, the GNU Debugger, GNU sysutils, GNU tar, GNUpg, GNU grep, GNU mailutils, GNU ncurses, GNU readline, GNU shellutils, GNU wget... you can install these on pretty much any system... is my gaming machine running gnu/win xp? or did we use gnu/solaris at -xxx-? Maybe, yes. maybe somebody should tell bill g. that there's number of gnu/win xp systems out there (I know that ms doesn't distribute gnu utils but quite a lot of people use win as essentialy poor man unix-like machine (it's kinda funny that poor man's unix machine is in this case more expensive than real unix machine:-)) this GNU narcissism is pretty annoying... where's the freedom RSM is promoting? the software is released under GPL and that's it. You can call that narcissism. In these days, I do not think that the freedom Richard Stallman, via the GNU project, promoted are so famous that we can afford to forgot an occasion to advertise. and I am all for advertising. everybody should now how great gnu (fsf) is, what rsm did etc. Nowhere in the GPL it says you have to call your project GNU/something. Is there anybody that ever made that request? You now, it is not about giving to the Linux project, a kernel project, the GNU prefix. It is about naming the system itself, system composed partly, but only partly, of the Linux kernel. I know nobody is asking for the kernel to be called gnu/linux. but the whole OS is/was called linux as well. even though only a small part of it is what linus (originally) wrote (kernel). so yes, somebody makes constant requests for linux (OS) to be called gnu/linux. I don't see any reason why the name of the system shouldn't be chosen by whoever creates the system, no matter how much of the gnu software it includes. even in extreme cases like early mandrake (which was basically redhat). there certainly isn't anything about it in gpl, there is no convention of doing so etc. rsm has absolutely no busines to tell other people how they should call their creations (or even politely ask). just to clarify: at the same time, if debian is called debian gnu/linux system because debian developers decided that it should be called that then that's it, I don't object to that. erik
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 11:59:10PM +, Scott James Remnant wrote: [I am not subscribed to debian-bsd, please Cc: me if you feel your reply deserves my attention.] On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 15:51, Joel Baker wrote: GNU represents the Gnu system, running with a native (Hurd) kernel GNU/Linux is the Gnu system, using Linux as a kernel What isn't entirely clear to me, here, is just how much composes the Gnu system. It seems fairly clear to me that Robert Millan's work (which is Debian's normal core userland, GNU-based, plus GNU libc) is more or less identical to Debian's normal situation, but with a NetBSD kernel instead of Linux. Therefore, I'm fairly certain it could be called GNU/NetBSD (or, to make the NetBSD folks happier, GNU/KNetBSD) and be precisely as accurate as GNU/Linux. No, that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. If GNU (or GNU/Hurd) is the GNU system with the Hurd as the kernel; And GNU/Linux is the GNU system with Linux as the kernel; Then GNU/NetBSD is the GNU system with the NetBSD kernel. RMS / FSF / GNU ask for the GNU prefix (where they consider it appropriate) *NetBSD* is asking for it to be 'KNetBSD' rather than just 'NetBSD', because the latter, in their view (and theirs is the view one should respect, given they created it) is the full OS, not just the kernel. This is not the same as Linux, obviously. No 'K' is required there, in fact advocating a 'K' is specifically in contradiction to what we're being asked to do by placing GNU/ on the front in the first place. If it's GNU/KNetBSD then it should also be GNU/KLinux and GNU/KHurd. Only if Linux asked us to make it KLinux, and I *really* doubt that RMS wants it KHurd, since it's just 'GNU', with no kernel specification, formally (Hurd is the declared default assumption of kernel for the GNU system, or so I have been told). The rest of the post makes little sense, given this clarification, so I'm not going to try to address it. -- Joel Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED],''`. Debian GNU/NetBSD(i386) porter : :' : `. `' `- pgp4GZS9MLx5B.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
Joel Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The impression (and, frankly, not an entirely clear one) I have gotton from RMS's various comments on the naming, especially in regards to NetBSD, boil down to the following (modulo probably screwing up the capitalization, which I can never remember the rules for, and I do apologize ahead of time): GNU represents the Gnu system, running with a native (Hurd) kernel GNU/Linux is the Gnu system, using Linux as a kernel I don't think it's a technical issue; if the debian community has decided that they're making a `GNU system', then it's a GNU system, regardless of what it contains (as long as it's in the ballpark). If they decide otherwise, then it's not. Remember George Washington's axe? `We've replaced the head twice, and the handle three times, but it's still GW's axe.' This is not to say that there aren't concrete reasons involved -- there are, such as glibc, important gnu utilities, a desire to follow the goals and ideals we think GNU represents (sometimes a fuzzy concept, but a factor nonetheless) -- just that they aren't as easily identifiable and measurable as viro wants them to be. This isn't debian's problem, of course, it's viro's. In the end it seems to come down to: (1) Do you want to be associated with GNU? (2) Does your system basically seem like the system that RMS thought of when he started the GNU project (suitably adjusted for inflation of course :-)? (3) Do you hark to the ideals of the GNU project (more or less -- note that debian seems to be going for `more' these days :-)? If so, then call your system `GNU/'. Most anti-GNU arguments I've seen are rather fixated on the minutia of (2), when in fact, (1) and (3) are far more important. -Miles -- Fast, small, soon; pick any 2.
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
[I am not subscribed to debian-bsd, please Cc: me if you feel your reply deserves my attention.] On Fri, 2003-12-19 at 01:55, Joel Baker wrote: *NetBSD* is asking for it to be 'KNetBSD' rather than just 'NetBSD', because the latter, in their view (and theirs is the view one should respect, given they created it) is the full OS, not just the kernel. This is not the same as Linux, obviously. Can't we just ignore them and give the distribution a sensible name? :-) Scott -- Have you ever, ever felt like this? Had strange things happen? Are you going round the twist? signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
