Re: Re: [LIH] Linux or GNU/Linux? a philosophical problem

[Sachin Garg <sachin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Arun Sharma wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 11:08:00AM +0530, Sachin Garg wrote:
> > If u listen to Stallman, as I did during Bang!inux, u do get impressed.
> > But, yes, I do agree that portions of what he says are pretty far
> > fetched. But, honestly, how much does the politics matter?
> 
> The politics doesn't matter, if it doesn't affect the software
> development process. Right now, it does.
> 
> > I am really afraid about that. An answer in point could be Atul's
> > statement about formalizing LUG membership. I personally don't read
> > sinister designs in it. After all, every group has to organise it
> > somehow in order to be recognised.
> 
> My community/movement bashing was basically rhetorical. I'm not trying
> to oppose Atul's attempt to get people together and formalize membership.
> I'm all for it. It's just the GNU-speak and the "get the world to use
> linux, come what may or you've failed in your duty to promote free software"
> attitude that bothers me. It bother me more, because I had the same mindset
> 3-4 years ago.
> 
> Technically - I see gcc specific code being encouraged everywhere just to
> kill other compilers being used, advocacy of inferior GPL based stuff
> against more advanced non-GPL stuff, general isolationism - all detrimental
> to the average free software user.

Now, that is wrong! I guess all of us would want that C code be written
to comply with the ANSI standard. Extensions, if necessary be used only
in *exceptional* circumstances, and I guess a work-around be there for
those compilers that d not support the particular extension.

And, yes, the GPL is *not* a panacea. Licences have to be taken on their
merit.

Actually, there is this problem that I have often thought about:

"I write code, which I wish to Open-Source or GPL. But this code uses
calls which are supplied by a 3rd party proprietary library. Can I
Open-Source/GPL this code?"

> That's because the trade press is mostly clueless. However, Linus Torvalds
> or Kirk McKusick don't write a 3 page manifesto, expressing their view
> of the world. They just write code. In that sense, among the technically
> literate, the GNU school of thought has had sufficient exposure - mainly
> because it's the only one which tries to.

I guess it is to get the name of GNU across to the end-user that
Stallman is fighting about!

> And really all this political manoevering is about getting developer
> mindshare - not the end user mindshare. That's where the code comes
> from and the success or failure of projects gets decided.

U have  apoint, but then where is code without users?

> HP-UX - scores pretty low. Mostly goes on the strength of HP hardware
> and the company clout. Was SVR3 based. Didn't have buffer cache + VM
> integration til recently. Single address space based.

Did u see my e-mail id :)

> FreeBSD - http://www.lemis.com/bsdpaper.html
> 
> A good technical comparision of some of the above is in
> Uresh Vahalia's book.

Thanks!

sachin