Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 30 Mar 1999 08:48:39 -0700 (MST) | From | Richard Stallman <> | Subject | Re: GNU/Linux |
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Well, if you instist on making the additional requirement that anyone using GNU tools must add GNU/ to whatever they produce (I see that nowhere in the GPL, BTW, where did that requirement come from?)
When talking about a Linux-based version of the GNU operating system, it's only fair to use GNU in the name. It's not a legal requirement; unlike the BSD developers, I'm not trying to force you. I'm asking you to do it voluntarily.
Perhaps you'd have better luck talking to the people who actually -make- the distributions, rather than a kernel hackers list?
Some distributions acknowledge that the system is GNU. But when I asked the makers of some commercial distributions to do this, they said that they chose the name based on maximizing sales rather than on what was right and proper. One of them reprinted my article about the issue, and said he basically agreed with it, but he still did not change the name of the distribution ;-(.
I can't tell them what to do, I can only ask.
We've already had evidence posted to this list that FSF-owned tools constitute less than 10% of the SuSE OS distribution.
The FSF-copyrighted programs are a portion of the GNU software, and tools are also just a portion. So what fraction of a particular system consists of FSF-copyrighted tools has no special significance.
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