Jean Louis wrote:
* Akira Urushibata <a...@wta.att.ne.jp> [2022-02-22 02:23]:
[...]
So I can see that Linus is giving credits to GNU, GCC, Richard
Stallman, and that he did not know nothing about free software before
he heard Stallman's speech in Helsinki.
Linux kernel was at that time proprietary.
He liberated kernel due to Stallman's talk.
I can also read a sentence where Linus says on page X: "Richard
Stallman wants to make everything open source" -- this shows clear
misunderstanding on side of Linus on what "open source" means and what
is "free software."
Linus also said: "Richard Stallman deserves monument in his honor for
giving birth to GPL"
There is quote that he acknowledges that his new system won't be big
and professional as GNU.
To me I see clear misunderstandings of Linus in his youth when he was
thinking that by making the kernel he is making "operating system".
It is misunderstanding.
My understanding of the history here is that Linus *was* more-or-less
making a homebrew operating system at the time. I remember a quote
describing Linux: "My terminal emulator grew legs."
[...]
And I could not find "strong disagreements with Richard Stallman
claims" -- not really, that is not my impression. He gives quite good
credits to GNU, and Richard Stallman and expresses his opinions as
from viewpoint of somebody who did not know what is free software and
somebody who mixes "open source" with free software and likes to be
rather pragmatic person.
There is also some confusion here from the "open source" advocates.
When I last checked, the Open Source Definition was, in all practical
respects, essentially equivalent to the Free Software Definition. As I
understand, this was intentional because "open source" was intended as
"free software for moral retards" as an effort to advance the cause of
software freedom among groups that are allergic to RMS's moral arguments.
There are many ways that effort can go wrong, and this is probably not
the best time or place to go sifting through them. :-/
[...]
By reading about other operating systems one may find that their
kernel is usually named different than the operating system.
As I understand, this is fairly unusual and actually a technical advance
that can be credited to the GNU system. Granted, it was an advance made
out of necessity, since GNU had everything *except* a kernel, so the
pieces *had* to work on foreign systems, but much as Unix was the first
operating system not bound to its original platform, GNU has been the
first operating system not bound to a specific kernel.
[...]
Me, as non native English speaker, I have hard time understanding this
sentence:
Moreover I stand in a position to state whether Netpbm should be
considered an OS component or an application."
Because you use the word "whether". It is unclear, as that word is
neither nor, but whether. See:
"https://www.thefreedictionary.com/whether" -- so I am not getting
it. You stand in the position to state... that Netpbm should be
considered an OS component or you stand in the position to state it
shold be considered application. There are two choices and I can't
understand that.
As a native English speaker, I understand that sentence to mean (at
least in the dialect I grew up with) that he is asserting expertise to
declare which of these (presumed mutually incompatible) statements is true:
1. Netpbm is an OS component.
2. Netpbm is an application.
In my view, I am unsure how this is actually a meaningful distinction
for a portable package -- Netpbm could be an OS component on one system
and an application on another, so I still scratch my head, but that is
how I understand his statement. Alternately, we could resolve that by
declaring that Netpbm is one or the other, but introduce the categories
of "bundled application" for an application included as an OS component
and "portable component" for an OS component installed as an application
on a different system.
-- Jacob