GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)

[David Schlesinger]

> Feel entirely free to call it "GNU/Linux", "Bob/Linux", "Jim/Linux" or
> whatever you like, okay. But _please_ stop proselytizing.

>Dude, why so prickly? I am not sure why this discussion is making you
>so agitated..? We are having a discussion, and if you want it to stop,
>just... stop? :-)

I'm not agitated, I simply (as do others) view this whole discussion as off-topic, divisive, unproductive and out-of-place here. Why on _this_ list?

Surely, you'd have more impact with your crusade if you went and pestered the Ubuntu folks to make _their_ site say "_GNU_/Linux for Human Beings." Not to mention getting the SuSe folks to change their product name to "SuSE _GNU_/Linux", and the Red Hat folks to change _theirs_ to "Red Hat _GNU_/Linux", and the Mandriva folks, and the Knoppix folks, and the Gentoo folks, etc., etc., etc.

There have been literally dozens of messages on these threads, the plurality of 'em from you, and after the first half-dozen or so, there's been nothing new to say.

>Does the popularity of an error makes it the truth?

It sure makes it not worth clogging up an unrelated mailing list with endless messages about it. Is there other misinformation you're going to feel impelled to "correct" us on? Why don't you invest in finding a better PR agency for the FSF instead?

(The fact is that the "principal designer" of the "GNU system" hasn't managed to get an actual working _system_ worth talking about put together so far, and no change in sight, in spite of having had since 1983 to work on it. The kernel isn't even "GNU" development, it was lifted pretty much wholesale from CMU's work on Mach, simply relicensed under GPL and re-christened "GNU Mach". So Avie Tevanian and the guys from CMU clearly deserve credit: the putative OS should be the "GNU/Mach System" in order to give credit to its "principal designers"...)

>I would want to suggest that in fact Australians speak English, and to
>discuss the history and origin of Australia.

And it would be just as off-topic if you were discussing the history and origins of Australia on this mailing list as it is for you to be insisting that folks refer free software _your_ way here...

>Now now, you are sailing close to Godwin's law :-)

Apparently, you've never met an actual cell phone customer. Your sales-droid would have lost them a third of the way into the second sentence. Remember: by definition, half of the folks out there are of below average intelligence. They still buy cell phones.

You should drop this, and stick to the subject matter of the mailing list: the FIC phone and the OpenMoko platform. As others have pointed out, you're reducing the signal-to-noise ratio with this.

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