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25 years of GNU + Linux and he manages to not mention Stallman or GNU once. Not once.


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25 years of GNU + Linux and he manages to not mention Stallman or GNU once. Not once.

Yeah, it's mind-blowing that a guy who refers to himself as a "UNIX Historian" doesn't mention Stallman even once.

Stallman has been harping about GNU/Linux since the mid-90s at least. He gave me a hard time about it back in 1998 or so.

How did this guy manage to write an entire article on GNU, the FSF, and ultimately open-source, without once mentioning Richard Stallman's name?

Stallman never misses an opportunity to bring up the Linux vs. GNU/Linux distinction.

Stallman seems to be somewhat jealous that Linux did what his software couldn't. And I'm saying this as a person who loves GNU software, philosophy and greatly respects Stallman. Just because your used a few GNU build tools, doesn't mean you should call it GNU.

GNU is Stallman's life work. Linux is headed up by Linus Torvalds. They're different things, with different communities of developers, different leaders, different goals. I'm not completely defending Stallman's overreaction, but it must be hard to see your magnum opus drop to 0% mindshare under the shadow of a smaller project.

This guy made GCC and Emacs. GCC in particular has shaped how most software has been compiled for decades.

His operating system, GNU, is the de-facto UNIX implementation and runs many critical systems around the world.

Anyone who claims that the guy is unlikeable has never truly bothered to hear him speak and isntrad relies on what they've been told by malicious actors. Stallman doesn't attack other people or ideologies.

If anything his biggest mistake was using Linux as a kernel for people decided to call the GNU operating system "Linux" and it eventually took most of the funding and development away from the OS and its ideology.


stallman is still the head of the GNU project.

Stallman is FOSS, not OSS.

Calling Stallman "Linux creator" is quite an achievement in ignorance when he explicitly refers to the os as "GNU/Linux" to give GNU credit.

Stallman has never said that people can call it just Linux if they choose. My understanding is that he refuses to interact with anyone unless they agree to call it GNU Linux. Seems like a control issue to me.

So now he calls Linux the GNU Operating system? Not even GNU/Linux anymore?

Sorry Stallman, even though you have done fantastic things for software and intellectual freedom, you are totally wrong on this one.


I don't understand why that would be relevant, Richard Stallman has nothing to do with Linux and has never worked on Linux at all.

Lol maybe if stallman actually made linux anyone would care. He's an insane man claiming a bunch of dev tools constitute an OS. Still hasn't made his own kernel because he can't.

Linux is linux. Not gnu linux. Bite me.


Oh yes, Stallman tends to think of Linux as mostly GNU and he likes to forget about non-GNU parts, which are as essential (X11 anyone? KDE, LXDE? systemd? Vim? etc.) Nothing to be excited about.

To save everyone the time, here's a typical Internet thread about Stallman:

- He's crazy!

- But he's right!

- Right? He's just been stating the obvious all this time!

- NSA surveillance!

- Hadn't anyone heard about Echelon?

- He stands for freedom of users!

- But users don't care about those freedoms, they just want something that works!

- He's antisocial and extremely rude!

- Autism spectrum.

- But he's not diplomatic at all, we don't want him as a spokesperson for Open Source!

- It's GNU/Linux, not Linux.

- See? It's nitpicking things like GNU/Linux that make even open source enthusiasts hate him!

- Only the userland is GNU anyway.

- GPL!

- Emacs!

- GCC!

- HURD!

- Toejam.


To save everyone the time, here's a typical Internet thread about Stallman:

- He's crazy!

- But he's right!

- Right? He's just been stating the obvious all this time!

- NSA surveillance!

- Hadn't anyone heard about Echelon?

- He stands for freedom of users!

- But users don't care about those freedoms, they just want something that works!

- He's antisocial and extremely rude!

- Autism spectrum.

- But he's not diplomatic at all, we don't want him as a spokesperson for Open Source!

- It's GNU/Linux, not Linux.

- See? It's nitpicking things like GNU/Linux that make even open source enthusiasts hate him!

- Only the userland is GNU anyway.

- GPL!

- Emacs!

- GCC!

- HURD!

- Toejam.


I think it's possibly one of the least interesting things about Stallman.
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