that old GNU/Linux argument

[Björn Persson]

Joe Klemmer wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 02:48 +0200, Björn Persson wrote:
> > Is Udev part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	Yes.
>
> > Is Bash part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	Yes.
>
> > Is GCC part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	Yes.
>
> > Is Yum part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	Yes.
>
> > Is Apache HTTPD part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	Yes.
>
> > Is Sylpheed part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	Yes.
>
> > Is GNU Chess part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	Yes.
>
> > Is Kylix part of what you call Linux?
>
> 	And, well, yes.
>
> 	While it's a fact that the kernel is the only part of any distro that's
> actually named Linux, The name has become attached to the entire OS.

Based on your answers I draw the conclusion that you use "Linux" as a 
collective name for all software that can run in a Unix-like environment, 
regardless of who wrote it or whether it's free or not. You probably think of 
Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu et cetera as different subsets of Linux, as none of 
them contains Kylix for example. You also don't seem to make any distinction 
between operating systems and applications, but consider all software part of 
the operating system.

I seriously doubt that's what Linus Torvalds means when he says "Linux", and I 
can assure you that Richard Stallman does not consider Kylix a part of 
GNU/Linux.

Björn Persson