On 1/22/07, Marcel de Jong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
How does adding three more letters and a / increase people's knowledge on free and open software?
The whole idea of calling the system GNU/Linux rather than Linux is a campaign of education. People that have heard of Linux and not GNU can look into it (e.g. Renaissance Man), and learn more about the history of the software. Sure, maybe most people buying phones won't be interested at all. But some will, and if 10 are, isn't that worth punching four extra keys? If freedom is a big thing for this project, wouldn't we work so that otherwise-uninterested people might become interested? I never learned about the free software movement from the GNU moniker, but I've thought some people about it, and the operating system history, because of my use of it. I wasn't really aware of any freedom difference when I was switching from Windows, but more a hack-ability difference. It's "open source", I was interested in that. That was Mandrake LINUX, and I learned nothing or little of freedom directly through them. Are we gonna tell our users OpenMoko is an open source Linux distribution, or a free software GNU/Linux distribution? It does matter. And actually, we shouldn't say either if you ask me, because OpenMoko isn't completely free software, or probably open source (non-free GPL daemon..), but the point I'm making is more about Linux or GNU/Linux. I can never understand how some people can manage to get upset about calling the system GNU/Linux, btw, or talking about using the GNU moniker. What is the problem? It attributes Linux still, and the guys that started things 20+ years ago. The guys that were and are really interested in freedom, which IS supposed to be a big thing for us, is it not? -- Declan Naughton _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
