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At some point hitherto, K. Ari Krupnikov hath spake thusly:
> You do realize that it's not about percentage of code in a product
> that the FSF hold the copyright to. It's about the fact that today you
> can have a completely free-as-in-freedom operating system. Something
> that would have not happened without GNU, but would have without the
> Perl interpreter or the Linux kernel.

I find that rather unlikely also.  gcc is certainly the most widely
used free compiler, but it is far from the only one.  Despite its
existence and popularity, many others have popped up.  If it were not
for GNU, the Linux system would just have used some other compiler.

As for the rest of GNU software, the vast majority of it has
alternatives, and a large percentage of those have a multitude of
replacements.  Not all of those replacements are GPL, but most are
at least OSI-compliant.  And, many of those replacements have existed
for years; some longer than GNU itself.

Actually, I think Linux was the best thing that ever happened to GNU,
rather than the other way around.  Before Linux started to gain
popularity, the GNU project proceeded at a (comparitively) very slow
pace.  Since Linux, development of GNU, and of a bazillion other free
software projects has flourished, growing exponentially.  I think GNU
owes every bit as much to Linux as Linux does to GNU, if not more so.

GAF raised another interesting point: why is it not GNU/FreeBSD?  All
of the same GNU utilities are available on FreeBSD systems...  What
distinguishes Linux from FreeBSD that Linux should be a GNU system,
and FreeBSD should not?

Someone will no doubt ask for proof that there are other free
compilers.  So here's a partial list:

  http://www.thefreecountry.com/developercity/ccompilers.shtml

One will note that some of these are formerly commercial compilers
that have been "freed" on account of Visual C++ making it impossible
to sell them.  This hardly matters; they still exist.  Even if they
were never freed, they still could be used to develop Linux.  But,
then, many of those compilers were always free.

Finally, I will point out that GNU does NOT provide all of the
components that make the Linux system useful.   For example, it STILL
doesn't have a usable kernel.  It lacks working versions of virtually
all internet servers (mail, news, http, dns, etc). [Some of these are
in development.  Many, AFAIK, are not.]  It does not provide a way to
display man pages, because GNU does not believe in man pages.  It does
not privide many of the basic building blocks that make a Unix system
work.   Have a look at the programs provided by util-linux, a non-GNU
package.  Have a look at net-tools, another non-GNU package.  These
programs are absolutely essential to a working Linux system.  They all
got written, even though it was not by the GNU Project; as did many,
many more that GNU did not provide.  So what makes you think the rest
wouldn't have?

This is just the tip of the iceberg of important programs that GNU
does not provide.  But we still have them.  Written by someone else.
And many of the other programs that GNU does provide are also provided
by other projects (such as, for example, KDE).  To say that we would
not have a Linux system without GNU seems a bit naive to me.  It just
would have taken a little longer.  Maybe.

GNU deserves a lot of credit for pushing the free software movement
along; however rms goes too far.

- -- 
Derek Martin               ddm@pizzashack.org    
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