<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Julian Wissmann <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:julianwissmann@gmail.com">julianwissmann@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I too think, that GNU/Linux was implied by everyone.<br>
Just thinking about my own usage of the term I felt I should add that<br>
after using GNU/Linux for about 8 years now I've actually never really<br>
used the term.<br>
It's the correct term when referencing the OS rather than just the<br>
kernel, but fact is that people actually say so when they refer to the<br>
kernel. So I'd say that this doesn't cause any confusion because it's so<br>
commonly used.<br>
Also there's a technical reason.<br>
You can't install just the Linux Kernel. You couldn't even boot, then.<br>
You need a userland for it, which is either GNU or Busybox with GNU<br>
being the one that is used on everything but embedded systems. Therefor<br>
saying that you use Linux actually implies that you are using GNU as well.</blockquote><div><br>It is well understood that many people use the term "Linux" to communicate that they use a Free Software operating system using the Linux kernel; nobody is arguing that calling it Linux is incomprehensible, because you can generally get at what they mean.<br>
<br>One problem is that it's increasingly insufficient to signify "free operating system" since GNU/OpenSolaris and GNU/*BSD are becoming increasingly talked about and are generally decent substitutes for GNU/Linux. (OpenSolaris will be particularly decent when it finally adopts the GPL...)<br>
<br>I don't particularly like typing "GNU/Linux" and I definitely have trouble saying it because it feels unwieldy to me. Couple that with the fact that I believe that Debian and Ubuntu are distributions everybody should use, and it comes out easiest in the end to just say Debian or Ubuntu rather than naming the major contributors to the project.<br>
<br>Besides, with GNU/Linux being unwieldy enough, there's no darn way I'm going to say "Debian GNU/<a href="http://freedesktop.org/Xorg/Apache/KDE/Linux">freedesktop.org/Xorg/Apache/KDE/Linux</a>" even though it's a shame to leave any of those groups out of any list of the groups which have made the GNU project's software so desirable today (and I'm sure there are dozens more I'm not thinking about right now).<br>
<br><br><br>To bring this closer to Free Culture discussion, I relate it to a large work of art involving many people's contributions (think Kutiman). I have no trouble calling it Thru-You, by Kutiman, and letting there be a link to the credits. So long as a list of contributors exists in a place where you can find it, I don't see any more trouble with calling the Free Software operating system just "Debian" than I have with leaving Kutiman's contributors out of the name of the work he derived.<br>
<br>Here's a question I'd like to think more about: how do people treat credit and attribution differently in software versus artwork?<br>Also code is poetry.<br><br>Cheers,<br>Ryan<br></div></div>