It is a little hard to tell what you are saying and what you are quoting.
This appears to be a quote from you:
"Freedoms are "marketing" and FSF is failing. I never guessed it was supposed
to be a fight to ask people give credit to the GNU project where it's due.
Instead, they take the deus ex machina-- Linus Torvalds -- and leave the real
issue unaddressed."
First, carefully watch a few of Stallman's videos and read his essays before
deciding what the whole movement is about.
Second, let's take your view that the FSF mission is to get credit for
'linux'. Richard Stallman is a genius--ask his friends and ask his enemies.
As a developer he was in high demand, and was highly paid. He made enough
money in 7 weeks to equal a year's salary. He single-handedly matched the
output of an entire team of hackers that used to work in his lab as a way to
keep a weaker competitor afloat. He wrote the gcc which even Torvalds credits
as the most important program in GNU and that he was dependent on it to make
his kernel. If Stallman made the gcc non-free, he would have made a lot of
money from that. So what do we have?
1.) Harvard graduate, top-notch programmer, was nominated for and won the
genius grant, given several awards and honorary doctorates from around the
world.
2.) He chose to live in his office and travel around the world giving
speeches instead of continuing his lucrative career, and having a normal
life.
3.) The two-hour speeches he gives contains at most 5 minutes of commentary
on the naming issue. The rest makes no mention Torvalds. In this he
ultimately asks for equal mention, not for all of the credit.
Now you are saying what again? That Stallman and the FSF are only about
getting credit for linux?
The facts are indisputable: the linux kernel is only one part of the
GNU/Linux system. This is like making a car and instead of naming it
acknowledging all of the engineering that went into it, you just call it a
V8. Doesn't it make a little more sense to call it by its make/model and say
'V8 inside'? Have you ever asked yourself if it is reasonable for torvalds to
insist on all of the credit?
Even this is not the main point. It is unethical to not give the GNU
developers any credit when without them linux would be an engine without a
car. The main point, however, is that Torvalds has a different politcal
agenda that is antagonistic to that of the FSF. By giving credit only to
Torvalds, only his cause is given any attention. This is to say nothing of
the open source people for whom ethics is not an important value.
It takes a lot of courage and sacrifice to stand up for what you believe in,
even if the rate of success doesn't match what people like yourself think it
should be. A lesser person would have caved or sold out and good luck having
free software. You better hope free software is the only practical option if
you are relying on open source and torvalds.
