GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)

[Dave Crossland]

(sorry for the premature post)

On 22/01/07, Andreas Kostyrka <andreas at kostyrka.org> wrote:
> * Renaissance Man <renaissanceman at macmail.com> [070122 01:38]:
> > I actually become aware of the FS movement via the GNU
> > moniker, so it worked on me. For many years I was only aware
> > of the OS movement (through knowing about "Linux").
>
> Guess you wasn't to much interested in the license of the software you
> use? Well, I'm certainly a freak for checking the license of anything
> new first. *g*

Yes, and the GNU GPL's introduction text is a very well written
introduction to the GNU project.

However, there are many people who have heard of "Linux" and "open
source" and have never read any software licenses. Proprietary EULAs
are so full of legal language non-sense, the idea that a software
license could be interesting is very strange :-)

The only way that people hear about GNU is by other people talking
about it. This is why it is important that the operating system we
love, which was started in the GNU project, says that it is a
variant of the GNU system plus the Linux kernel.

This is well explained in the essay at http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html

-- 
Regards,
Dave