Re: When can we expect a version 1.0 of the GNU Operating System?

[Brandon Invergo]

I'll interject with some miscellaneous thoughts on terminology:

- *the* GNU system, as such, exists without any specific action
   necessary.  The GNU system is, simply put, a collection of free
   software that can be used together to give rise to a completely free
   Unixoid operating system.  That is, the system as a whole arises as
   an emergent property of all of those software packages interacting
   with each other.  The software need not be exclusively distributed by
   GNU and plenty of important pieces are not.  Thus, RMS's original
   goal, I think, has long been satisfied, even if some things have not
   gone as originally planned (eg the kernel situation).

- distributions of the GNU system are specific efforts to, well,
  distribute the GNU system as defined by a chosen set of components.
  The specific components may vary from distro to distro, but the system
  that arises from their combination is still GNU.  Some, lamentably,
  include some very non-GNU components, but despite those warts and
  festering lesions, are still essentially GNU systems.

- I don't know if it makes much sense, then, to talk about an "official"
  GNU distribution.  We would essentially be saying "these are the
  components that we deem to be strictly necessary to produce the GNU
  system".  But we know it isn't true: many of those components have
  perfectly valid free software alternatives; swapping those components
  for alternatives would still produce a free GNU operating system.
  e.g. swapping openssh for lsh would still result in a free GNU
  system.

I would argue that rather than talking about producing The Official GNU
System, we should be talking about producing a *reference* distribution
of the GNU system.  The Guix guys are effectively doing that in my
opinion and I think it's great.  Now, instead of us saying "these are
the strictly necessary components", we're saying "here is, to us, an
excellent way to put together the GNU system" with an extra advantage of
being able to highlight some GNU Project packages that don't normally
get included in the other distros (again like lsh vs openssh).

How does that sound?  Am I on my own in thinking this way?

-brandon

-- 
Brandon Invergo
http://brandon.invergo.net

signature.asc
Description: PGP signature