On Fri, 2005-07-29 at 09:34 +1200, John Williams wrote: > 1. Barry wants to name an entity in the same class as (what is known in > the popular press as) a Linux distribution (or a BSD distribution, or > whatever)
>From what I know from reading the wiki, he wants ``establish a new direction to a GNU System distribution''. > > 2. Responders to his idea seem to believe that he is talking about > renaming either (1) the community that produces the software, or (2) the > "system". He seems to be talking about renaming the operating system because, to him, ``just GNU is confusing". > 4. "System" is highly ambiguous. When we say "GNU is not Unix" this > begs the question "what is Unix"? It is certainly not a kernel, a > product you can buy, or an ISO you can download. It is a computing > platform (software) in the broadest sense of the word, perhaps most > usefully defined as a set of interfaces (POSIX). All this is geek-speak > of the highest order. At the top of www.gnu.org, it says ``The GNU Operating System", with bold letters. I don't think ``operating system" is confusing. GNU is just an operating system. The project to develop it is known as ``the GNU project". > > 6. All the above leads me to conclude that we should call it (what Barry > is talking about) the "GNU OS". For those with American accents, this > of course expands to "(guh) new OS", or "New Operating System". To me > GNU is a collection of software that embodies and implements > socio-political principles in addition to IT/CS principles. We should > distinguish between "a bunch of software" and an operating system. You are incorrect. GNU is the name of an operating system; it is at version 0.2. _______________________________________________ gnu-system-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-system-discuss
