Re: [school-discuss] GNU/Linux issue, please bury

[Leon Brooks <leon@brooks.fdns.net>]

On Monday 06 May 2002 19:11, Dennis Heuer wrote:

I agree with the rest of your post, but not this par:

> Second, you shouldn't discuss this here but in the FSF mailinglist--or,
> if you can't suppress it, at slashdot.

The FSF aren't making the announcement. This (and seul-edu) are the only fora 
in which changes to the announcement can be appropriately discussed with any 
hope of influencing the outcome. IMHO that amounts to the whole point of 
having freedom of speech in the first place.

Reiterating my view on GNU/Linux: the headline is not the place for it.

The rest of the article discusses open source a lot, which is good. I would 
rather discuss GPL, since IMESHO the GPL licence is truly open source, BSD 
etc are essentially giftware and so not guaranteed to *remain* open or even 
be acknowledged (Microsoft demonstrated that, only their very recent products 
give anything like a wholehearted acknowledgement of their contributors). BSD 
is still *much* better than proprietary, and in a limited range of 
circumstances it's more appropriate than GPL. It's also important to make the 
point that the GPL is the *only* licencing scheme which seems to offend a 
certain convicted illegal monopolist.

GPL, however, is not _yet_ a good buzzword to use in general press releases. 
The purpose of a release is to attract attention, not to hammer every 
theological point out flat. Once that attention has been attracted, it can 
then be more closely steered. Even then, the GNU/Linux issue is something 
that should be introduced gently, not rammed down people's throats or used as 
a test of faith. God forbid that we should follow in the footprints of the 
Inquisition, even in principle.

I personally use the term Linux+GNU since it more accurately conveys what's 
going on. Debian are getting set to distribute a FreeBSD with a GNU toolset. 
Is the term GNU/FreeBSD appropariate there, or confusing?

I hope this is sufficient to show the naysayers why I'm not _yet_ interested 
in highlighting the term for a press release.

Cheers; Leon