Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
> "Joel" == Joel Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Joel> RMS / FSF / GNU ask for the GNU prefix (where they consider it Joel> appropriate) Right. Joel> *NetBSD* is asking for it to be 'KNetBSD' rather than just 'NetBSD', Joel> because the latter, in their view (and theirs is the view one should Joel> respect, given they created it) is the full OS, not just the kernel. This Joel> is not the same as Linux, obviously. I wouldn't call the curtained legal threat ``asking''. >> 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. Joel> Only if Linux asked us to make it KLinux, and I *really* doubt that RMS Joel> wants it KHurd, since it's just 'GNU', with no kernel specification, Joel> formally (Hurd is the declared default assumption of kernel for the GNU Joel> system, or so I have been told). I've personally accepted KNetBSD for the sake of distinguishing from the other NetBSD-based Debian port. *sigh* They were there first :) ~velco
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Scott James Remnant wrote: > Debian NetBSD > The Debian user land with the NetBSD kernel and core system > running on an i386. Again this could be "Debian NetBSD/NetBSD" > except I dislike repetition. I don't think that is ever suggested. None of the Debian developers seem to plan to have NetBSD core system included. > I don't see why what version of 'ls' gets put in the stable distribution > this week has any relevance on the overall name. NetBSD's ls has different switches and slightly different output formatting than coreutils' ls. Most noticable is the missing getopt_long(3) style options. > There are far more > important components to the system, such as the init method, package > management, etc. which if they were changed would cause severe user > shock. That is true. And that is what mostly makes Debian, Debian. > If we replaced the various GNU utilities with (say) BSD ones, how many > people would really notice? Most people think we provide GNU awk as the > default. I am no colorls fan, but many will notice lack of color in NetBSD's native ls(1). BSD's use jot instead of seq. BSD's use "tail -r" instead of tac. NetBSD doesn't have "cp -r" (with small "r"). Many, many minor differences (and again most noticable is lack of long options). Again none of this matters, since the normal Debian packages are used. (By the way, I use NetBSD's pkgsrc and NetBSD's rcNG rc.d style scripts for Linux.) Jeremy C. Reed echo '9,J8HD,[EMAIL PROTECTED]:[EMAIL PROTECTED];[EMAIL PROTECTED]@5GBIELD54DL>@8L?:5GDEJ8LDG1' |\ sed ss,s50EBsg | tr 0-M 'p.wBt SgiIlxmLhan:o,erDsduv/cyP'
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
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))
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))
[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. 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. My two cents on this whole deal: Debian GNU/Linux 1. Debian This tells you what system you're getting, the package management and the general selection of stuff. ie. the "user land" is Debian. 2. GNU This tells you that the core of that system is the GNU system, and I see the core as the dynamic linker, libc and other essential components. 3. Linux This is the kernel. This is a highly scalable naming scheme, and gives us: Debian GNU/Hurd The Debian user land with the GNU core system and GNU Hurd kernel. This could be "Debian GNU/GNU Hurd" or "Debian GNU" (I dislike repetition of information.) Debian GNU/NetBSD The Debian user land with the GNU core system and the NetBSD kernel. Debian NetBSD The Debian user land with the NetBSD kernel and core system running on an i386. Again this could be "Debian NetBSD/NetBSD" except I dislike repetition. I don't see why what version of 'ls' gets put in the stable distribution this week has any relevance on the overall name. There are far more important components to the system, such as the init method, package management, etc. which if they were changed would cause severe user shock. If we replaced the various GNU utilities with (say) BSD ones, how many people would really notice? Most people think we provide GNU awk as the default. 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
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. 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: 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 (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. Maybe what he was saying, but that's obviously not the real issue. 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). 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
Re: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
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.
RE: GNU within the name (Was: Changes in formal naming for NetBSD porting effort(s))
[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"?
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))
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.
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 | +-+
