Re: what DOES the GPL really say?

[David Kastrup <dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>]

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Chris Morgan <mihalis@ix.netcom.com> writes:

> This is a very tricky issue here. Depending on ones prejudices (and
> I have a full complement) one might feel that the Linux "project"
> has only succeeded so astonishingly well because of the advanced
> state of the GNU software it incorporates (but this is highy
> inflammatory to some).

Not at all.  It is a plain fact that the Linux project has succeeded
the way it did *because* of the advanced state of the incorporated GNU
software.  As reverence to the vast contribution the GNU project has
posed, and in recognition of the spirit and the working connotations
involved, Linus Torvalds has put the Linux kernel under the GPL as
well and has acknowledged and stressed the large influence and
importance of the GNU project for the Linux endeavour.

What *has* been inflammatory is that some people from the GNU project
felt it necessary to consider the work of the Linux community invested
in developing a Posix kernel and cleanly integrating the whole lot of
utilities from the GNU project as well as other system components as
just stealing the idea of a GNU system, and have consequently chosen
to unilaterally call the system different names, expressing their
implicit intellectual ownership of the whole Linux movement.

This has raised quite a lot of stink and a lot of overbearing and
partly silly reactions (such as trying to make a "truly" free system
not containing any GPLed components).  Still, some continuing
annoyance remains between people claiming "What you call Linux is just
our GNU system and a bit of kernel" and people wanting to forget the
seminal influence of the whole GNU project altogether if possible (not
that it is) because they get offended by that stance.

Of course, it would be much much more important if both parties kept
their peace and instead focused their ire on things like the upcoming
"I2O" standard which explicitly aims to prohibit development of free
software and particular operating systems for use on standard
hardware.

The recent investment of MS into Apple might be seen as paving the
road for getting this scheme work on a distributed hardware base.  If
the same I/O systems prohibiting use of Linux, the Hurd, FreeBSD and
others are spread to PowerPC bases as well, perhaps they will even
migrate by marketing pressure to Alphas.  Soon no hardware at all will
be able to work with free operating systems, and the whole
Hurd/GNU/Linux animosities will rage on without any significance.


-- 
David Kastrup                                     Phone: +49-234-700-5570
Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de       Fax: +49-234-709-4209
Institut f�r Neuroinformatik, Universit�tsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany