GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)

[David Schlesinger]

Gosh, why does this fail to surprise me?

Didn't you get to say your piece already? Why don't you harass the Ubuntu
folks with this, hm? There are many more folks calling it "Linux" than
"GNU/Linux", and very few people who seem to care strongly about your
over-developed sense of "history" and "ethics", but you seem to be hgving
trouble accepting that.

One _more_ time: you are dragging down the signal-to-noise ratio on the list
with this persistent silliness. I thought you'd developed a little maturity
and decided to drop it and stay on topic, but I see I was over-optimistic.

It's got nothing to do with "ethics": it has to do with someone's obsessive
(and at least four lengthy web pages on the subject counts in my book as
"obsessive") need to get the "credit" he feels he "deserves" but has been
"cheated" out of by common parlance.

Better still, tell you what: since you're all about the "ethics" here, go
and get the folks at "GNU" to change the name of their system to "GNU/Mach"
and _then_ come back to talk to _us_.

"Ethics" should start at home.


On 1/24/07 8:15 AM, "Dave Crossland" <dave at lab6.com> wrote:

> On 23/01/07, David Ford <david at blue-labs.org> wrote:
>> 
>> - Free software existed before GNU
>> - Free software philosophies and movements existed before GNU
>> - Free software will continue to exist after GNU
>> - Free software philosophies and movements will continue to exist after GNU
>> - GNU is not the One True Way (tm) of free software, never was, and
>> never will be
> 
> I feel it is misleading to describe code distributed in the 1960s and
> 70s as 'free software' - because software freedom was not recognised
> or enshrined.
> 
> It would be like labelling early farmers as organic.
> 
>> It's okay for you to disagree, but this doesn't give you the right to
>> keep browbeating people into accepting the religion of GNU.
> 
> This is a matter of ethics, not religion. When you call it "religion",
> do you mean it is purely arbitrary and not worth thinking about? Do
> you dismiss all ethics by calling it
> "religion"?