On 10/11/06, Devdas Bhagat devdas@dvb.homelinux.org wrote:
On 11/10/06 20:35 +0530, Faraz Shahbazker wrote:
<snip> > toward GNU then it is only fair that you should NOT use any GNU tools > to bootstrap your project. Best of luck!!! :-P > As RMS put it, it was necessary to use closed source tools to write emacs initially.
Touche :-)
A pure GNU/Linux system wouldn't be very useful, unless I was to write a lot of software myself.
By definition that is exactly what forms an "Operating System" . The rest are applications. Once again the boundaries may be blurred for YOU becoz the distro packages everything together.
eg. say I don't need X or apache / (never use KDE anyway) / and I am prepared to use w3(GNU) instead of Firefox. Now with a few small applications which may [not] not fall under any particular large project, I still have a usable system.
Try recreating the above scenario without glibc/binutils/coreutils (or any replacement thereof) and see what you get. Note that I've not even mentioned gcc since a user may not want to do any programming at all.
Linux == kernel, GNU == indispensible(but kernel-less) project [excuse HURD]
Pssst. gcc is about the only indispensible component. All the rest are dispensible.
You are wrongly equating "dispensible" with "replacable". We are not saying that you cannot replace GNU, but that without GNU or any equivalent replacement there would be no system to use inspite of all other large contributors. And now, since you are using GNU and not some equivalent replacement you should acknowledge as much.
And no one would deny them the credit for initiating the Free Software movement. But on my system, there is _no_ first among equals. There is root, and then there are the mortals. There is the kernel, and then there is the userland.
If by root you mean Operating System, then see the difference between a kernel and what constitutes an Operating System.
It would have been different if Linus had handed over copyright to the FSF, or if the involvement of the FSF had been more.
Once again, were not claiming kernel ownership, so we need not have been involved in kernel development. Moot point
. farazs