Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 23 Dec 1998 18:17:02 -0700 (MST) | From | Richard Stallman <> | Subject | Re: Article: IBM wants to "clean up the license" of Linux |
| |
Please show a bit more respect for Linus and all the other people and their efforts...: call the linux kernel "Linux" as Linus wanted to call it
I always call the kernel Linux, for precisely that reason. Linus Torvalds started that program, and he says the name is Linux, so I call it Linux out of respect for him.
I ask people to do the same thing for the operating system as a whole. It was started in 1984 by the GNU Project. For years, before Linux was written, we developed many components (not just "tools") of this system, and we did so as steps in the development of the system as a whole. (See the GNU Manifesto.)
Linux (the kernel) doesn't come from the GNU project, and we never try to claim any credit for it. When people say that the GNU project "developed important parts of Linux", we explain that we don't deserve that honor, because none of Linux is our work. And we never call Linux a GNU program. (Some people have misinterpreted this as a gesture of rejection of Linux; actually, it is because we're not entitled to say so.)
But while the GNU project played no role in the writing of Linux, it started the development of the operating system as a whole. That's what the GNU project was and is about. Writing dozens of programs such as GCC, Bash and libc--not only "tools"--was just a part this larger project.
The system version most of us are using is the combination of Linux and the GNU system. "GNU/Linux" is a good way to describe that combination, and when I write that, it always means the whole combination. The kernel is simply Linux.
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |