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Comment by babarock | Hacker News Reader

You seem to imply that GNU userland tools are:

1. an inherent part of the Operating System.

2. the only way Linux can be used.

The first point is debatable. In academic circles (where Linus has spent a big part of his career), operating systems usually designate the kernel. In commercial products, the kernel by itself is not very useful, so you'd add a few userland utilities to your definition.

The second point is simply wrong. Busybox is a very widely used alternative to GNU, and Android, arguably the most successful mass consumption Linux system to date, has zero GNU tool.

As much as I appreciate GNU, the FSF and rms, this constant demand for credit is, too often, misplaced and above all, a bunch of misguided rhetoric.

Can't we simply be happy for an engineer who fully deserves the recognition he's getting?

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GNU's a little more than some userland tools thrown in for good measure. It is actually an operating system.

If you look at the posix spec, which defines what a real "unix" should have and how it should behave, there's a tremendous amount of libraries and little tools (like how, for example, 'sed' is mandatory). If you look at a barebones installed unix-like system, most of these utilities and libraries actually come from GNU. In these days of X and GUI-goodness, they don't seem very important anymore, but nevertheless, they are needed to be able to claim one has a full unix-like operating system.

As for credit hogging, a lot of work went into writing GNU, and most of it was not rockstar-programming like kernel work. Most of the people who wrote GNU wrote it with a specific reason. That those people make a plea to call it by a name that would acknowledge those reasons, is neither unreasonable nor overly burdensome, and most importantly, not mandatory. As such, I don't feel it's "misplaced", or a "bunch of misguided rhetoric".

>Can't we simply be happy for an engineer who fully deserves the recognition he's getting?

Of course, any money in Linus' pocket is well spent. His approach to online collaborative development advanced the entire industry! ( the kernel is, of course, a great achievement as well, just not quite as remarkable )

I gave GNU as an example of one userland that is commonly conflated with Linux. As you note, there are others. The main point is - Linux is not an operating system and it is misleading and incorrect to refer to it as such.

RMS's shrill remarks about how Linus is "stealing" credit from the FSF are misguided. I try to maintain the distinction between kernel and OS primarily out of a desire to be accurate about how I describe an operating system. Android and Ubuntu are clearly different and describing both as "Linux" is not particularly helpful to anyone.

> "Android and Ubuntu are clearly different and describing both as "Linux" is not particularly helpful to anyone."

except they both run on the Linux kernel, so it is, nevertheless, accurate.

personally, i think it is helpful. there seems to be an ongoing criticism of Linux that it hasn't made much progress as the basis for a desktop operating system. while that may be true, talking about Linux in relation to android helps raise awareness that there's another kernel out there not put out by apple or microsoft that's responsible for running a large percentage of mobile devices on the market.

as apple frequently states, we're now living in the "post pc era". who's to say that the desktop and mobile spaces won't continue to merge, at which point your "not particularly helpful to anyone" use of the word Linux to describe both will become more relevant.

indeed, ubuntu is already trying to push things in this direction. http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android

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