[CLUE-Talk] Thoughts on GNU.

[Jed S. Baer]

On Sun, 26 May 2002 21:08:28 -0600
David Anselmi <anselmi at americanisp.net> wrote:

> There was a post a few days ago linking to an RMS article that said,
> among other things, that the correct name of our favorite OS is
> GNU/Linux, not Linux.

Only the latest of many such. Gotta admire Stallman for tenacity.

> Well, my only reaction is that GNU is unsuitable as a brand and Linux
> works fine.  I don't know diddly about business, so ignore my opinion if
> you like.

GNU/Linux just seems unwieldy. People have tendency to shorten terminology
anyway. Whether or not RMS has a point, "Linux" has gotten "brand
recognition" Yeah, it would be nice if more people would hear about GNU
and the Free Software Foundation, and Linux is a good route for that sort
of thing.

The thing I found most interesting in that article, and I'm surprised more
people didn't comment about, was the inclusion of the binary-only content
in device drivers, and whether this can truly be considered "open source"
in the GPL sense.

> But hey, look at this.  A rant against GNU/Linux (or should we say
> LiGNUx--then we're still CLUE and not CGUE or CG/LUE):
> 
> http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.06.html#subj5

The author makes some good points, put he's painting with awfully broad
brush. Yep, I've met the "non-CompSci" types who think they're more
competent at software development than they are, and don't realize it. But
there are also people who have knack for software, even though their
degree is in chemistry. They developed an interest in software later, and
learned in various ways.

I might not, in fact, know whether the person[s] who wrote xyz program
that I use regularly are "bona-fide" software engineers, talented
hobbyists, or boneheads. But I can try the program out and see if it
works. The klunkers are usually pretty easy to weed out quickly. And, just
because a program comes from Sun, or HP, or some other big company,
doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be well-written either.

I wish I were well-informed enough about the whole comfigure/make/build
process, on several platforms, to know how well his statement about that
holds up. My suspicion is that it isn't just GNU programs which suffer
from similar maladies.

> Better is the counter-rant at:
> 
> http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.07.html#subj8

Obviously, since he makes the same points I did, yes, much better ;-).
Except when he was talking about "All the world's a VAX", he didn't mean
VMS |-(

jed
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