jsnc

Because what you mentioned is ahistorical and based off reactionary history by bad actors.

Rms draws the line a GNU because GNU stands for a free operating system, which is what the GNU project is aiming towards. If this were purely a discussion about technicality, then we would be wise to let the matter drop, but that's not whats at stake here.

shouldn't I call my system Plasma/KWin/pacman/systemd/GNU/Linux?

You can, you literally can and it would be better that way to accurately describe what operating system you're running. The shortest possible name is GNU, but that would be unfair to the contribution made by the linux foundation and the fact that multiple kernel projects do exist: so the name is GNU/Linux.

His essays on the topic which are publicaly accessible from the GNU website do discuss this.

other than to stroke his own ego

Rest assured that rms does not doing this out of ego tripping. Maybe you should tease Linus Torvalds for calling his kernel linux and the ENTIRE operating system linux. Torvalds is a multimillionaire who has used an apple M1 laptop. Stallman has never budged on libre software and directs his own life by his own stated principles. Call Rms stubborn, but never call him egotistical.

None of this is directed at you btw, it's just something that always springs to mind for me whenever this topic comes up.

Please read Free Software, Free Society by Richard M Stallman so that this doesn't have to keep springing up anymore. There are very few "linux" comm members who have read the foundational literature in full so I hope you do take my advice.

"ecosystem" is a misleading term here. There is no "ecosystem" in CS, market giants explicitly make decisions about what their product policy is and rarely budge on them out of goodwill. Ecosystem implies that we implicitly lack a large degree of control and are only observers. That may be true for cutting edge research (only sometimes from a certain perspective), but hardly the case for when a company wants to create jails in their software for their clients. Or refuse to release firmware for a wifi card that they don't even sell anymore. Those are gardens meant to trap users in. The garden of the GNU project is all unapologetically libre software meant to prevent users from endangering themselves with nonfree software.

The GNU project never "allowed" non-free components, but they will always exist. The goal is to obtain a fully free operating system on all levels. It's okay to use proprietary software for the purposes of study and reverse engineering (a la using UNIX to develop userland/kernel). What's not okay is to stop agitating for more freedom.

The current GNU/Busybox + Linux desktop is virtually a complete operating system, but is held back by blobs and users advocating for proprietary software (users complaining that proprietary "X" doesn't run on "Linux").

We get market share by being more free, not by making ruinous compromises.

The strategy of the GNU project is to create and support as much free software as possible to make proprietary software obsolete.

Firmware is one of the biggest hurdles as the freeworld has the userland locked down for the most part (albeit some editing software like CAD or becoming feature competitive with photoshop).

There will always be people seeking to control others through dirty licenses and EULAs. The solution is not to target them (yet!) but to reject them and empower ourselves.

If that means not being able to use a wifi card: use an adapter! Or use ethernet. If that means we can't get microcode, we'll find cpus unencumbered by patents or reveree engineer them. Want to use an apple m1? There are people trying to liberate that machine as much as possible.

Linus Torvalds has a large political influence, even he couldn't hold back and flipped off Nvidia. But Torvalds and the rest of the foundation don't go further than that. They're willing to criticize but not to condemn.

You're right in that the larger hardware industry is an even bigger shithole artifice than IT is. Thats a failure of state actors who have an open secret of corruption (esp in the US) and laziness. Projects like RISC-V and coreboot are promising in that regard.

So we either have the choice of accepting proprietary drivers or just not using the functionality of GPUs.

Thats just life. This is still a transitionary period. But soon in the future, all software will be libre and all proprietary elements will be purged, never to come back ever again.

No one is here to coddle your feelings. Enjoy being a loser bootlicker, you never cared in the first place and want to project that onto others.

I mean the GPL allowed linux to become a commercial entity. And the whole "professional" outlook is because theres a ton of companies who contribute either funds or development to the project.

Hurd is not a monolithic kernel, so it's an interesting technical endeavor. It's also a GNU package which means it's guaranteed to stay libre.

Hurd is also a smaller project relative to linux without the many eyes of the Linux board members.

It is a "zealot" opinion because I don't topple over at the slightest breeze.

Both Linux and Hurd are libre software. However, the freedom of linux is compromised as torvalds set the standard for how OEMs can circumvent the GPLv2.

"viable competitor" is not the correct term to use. It miscontrues decades of history and circumstance.

Hurd is far better than Linux in terms of ensuring your freedom. But linux is better for getting more folks onto the freedom ladder. Linux however, isn't the end goal: GNU is. If you don't know what that means, congrats, you're part of the problem.

GNU has their own kernel, called linux-libre, which follows the same set of principles as Hurd. It won't function 100% on modern OEM hardware but its important as message towards freedom.

I use a blobbed kernel one if my machines, but I also have a librebooted debian thinkpad. I am intensely interested in a fully free OS, this is why i seem stubborn to those who don't even keep what Im saying in mind.

My x220 uses intel microcode, that is nonfree software. However, I was convinced by the founder of libreboot's (Leah Rowe) extensive writing to make it so. Im not completely stubborn, but Im also not careless.

Nothing is holding hurd back. Debian and GNU Guix both ship hurd. The world has failed hurd instead.

Hurd will never accept firmware blobs or proprietary drivers. Thus, it will not work on OEMs who use those tactics for their machines. You are still able to install hurd in a VM as those have libre standards.

This is true for all GNU packages, not just hurd.

Intel and AMD both have tons of blobs that they ship to the kernel. Google has Android which relies on more nonfree firmware and proprietary user space. ChromeOS is also another example.

Strict copyleft has always shielded contributions from being used nonfree programs, ensuring their freedom. Weakened copyleft or pushover licenses should only be used in certain circumstances.

"Open source" was not a concrete concept back then. It was certainly not as we know the concept today. The noncommercial clause in torvald's initial license would not comply with the 4 freedoms, thus it was proprietary.

Torvalds didn't "sell out" to GNU. He liberated his own project for use in the GNU Operating System which is and always will be a project to create a fully free operating system.

Libre != noncommercial, neither are virtually all definitions of the modern open source movement. If torvalds were to sell out he would have kept his kernel as it was.

The FSF is not "too idealistic." It is simply an organization dedicated to a set of standards for software freedom. They solve problems related to living without nonfree software and share those solutions.

The real "idealistic" world is the status quo, where all humans are meant to grovel at the IT tyrants as computer science becomes more and more stripped away from public conciousness. It is idealistic to think that human citizens would not revolt against this system and expose it for the parasitic shell that it is.

The FSF is a response to freedom being stripped away from us day by day. The reason you didn't think of it that way is because no one is immune to propaganda blasted to you 24/7.

Every good natured family member who tells you to use facebook, every peer who tells you to go on a discord "server." Every weak redditor. The huge amounts of e-waste produced by OEMs with little to no regulation. And all the kids who are being raised under the jailphones of iOS and Android. This is all propaganda designed to manufacture consent for you swindling away your freedom to privacy and computer science. If the ghouls could convince you that computers were magic, they would.

Why would this not spawn the most fierce resistance campaign that spans the entire globe? One that is unyielding and hostile to threats?

And why wouldn't one want you to think that they're too "idealistic?"

• https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

Top members are all companies that have made bank abusing their users to no end. Linus Torvalds refuses to upgrade to GPLv3 because he doesn't see the value for enforced freedom restrictions. He is a "freedom for me, but not for thee" type of person. Hurd on the other hand will never suffer this issue because of it being a GNU package.

The kernel is filled to the brim with nonfree firmware blobs. These blobs can be updated/modified by the vendor but not by the user, by that definition, they are nonfree. You could say that Linus Torvalds chose the "pragmatic" option. You wouldn't be wrong to deduce that none of the companies on that board member list would EVER contribute to the kernel if they had to also respect the user's freedom.

But that's the thing, Torvalds still sold out. Scandals like the proprietary Nvidia driver (which will now get its home in nonfree firmware) gets to happen (and will continue to happen) because the precedent was set. Torvalds historically didn't even want to liberate his kernel until he was convinced by the work of the GNU project to do so.

Torvalds is the poster boy because he does not threaten any sort of status quo. No one is immune to propaganda, and the Torvalds "Open Source" media narrative is still the dominant one. The GNU/Linux vs. Linux controversy is propelled by this Faustian pact.