Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Re: How to respond to anti-GNU trolls?

[Matt Lee]

Tim Dobson wrote:

>> First I've never heard (or seen written)  GNU/OpenSolaris before today,

Strange - Sun are distributing it.

http://get.opensolaris.org/ - also, its website? http://www.gnusolaris.org/

>> neither have I seen GNU/*BSD (has anyone applied the GNU toolset to the BSD
>> kernel, and who survived= the ensuing licence flame war) . 

http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/

http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

It's certainly not
>> in common usage even when referring to those operating systems. 

Oh it is, but those operating systems are different to netbsd and freebsd.

Secondly the
>> reverse is also true, I could take much of the the GNU toolset and replace
>> them whilst still running a Linux system. Does this mean that if, for
>> example I dropped the switched the GNU toolset for the BSD one, I'd have to
>> call the resulting system BSD/Linux??

GNU's not a toolset, it's an operating system - but you can replace
coretuils, shell, libraries, etc with say, Busybox, and have a non-GNU
Linux system.

>> The easiest way to clear this up is for you to define "Operating System" to
>> me; I don't belive that userland tools are part of an OS, do you?

GNU isn't a set of userland tools. It contains a shell, compiler,
libraries and coreutils, as defined in the POSIX standard.

Certainly, a kernel does not an operating system make.

>>> Progress on the Hurd is slow - when there are already several better
>>> working kernels for the GNU system, it is difficult to get a critical
>>> mass of developers to work on another kernel, when there are more
>>> important free software projects to hack on.
>> Also can you define the "GNU system" to me please, is it anything with the
>> GPL attached, or just GCC?

The GNU Operating system - base level - GNU Coreutils, GNU Bash, glibc,
gcc. Hurd.

Replace Hurd with Linux = GNU + Linux, or GNU/Linux.

Coreutils:-

chgrp   chown   chmod   cp      dd      df      dir     dircolors       install 
ln      ls      mkdir   mkfifo
mknod   mv      rm      rmdir   shred   sync    touch   vdir    Text utilities  
cat     cksum   comm
csplit  cut     expand  fmt     fold    head    join    md5sum  nl      od      
paste   ptx     pr
sha1sum sort    split   sum     tac     tail    tr      tsort   unexpand        
uniq    wc      basename
chroot  date    dirname du      echo    env     expr    factor  false   groups  
hostid  id
link    logname nice    nohup   pathchk pinky   printenv        printf  pwd     
readlink
seq     sleep   stat    stty    tee     test    true    tty     uname   unlink  
users   who     whoami  yes

And no, applying the GPL to something doesn't make it a part of the GNU
System.

http://directory.fsf.org/GNU/ lists all pieces of the GNU OS.

GNOME is part of the GNU OS :)

matt