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  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  To  : Jason Tamn <jtan163@bigpond.net.au>
  Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 23:56:05 +0930

Re: linux is not GNU/linux [was RedHat 7.1 reliability?]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 11:47:35PM +0930, Jason Tamn wrote:
> 
[....]
> I infer that part of your definitionis if the program runs in user or kernal
> space.
> 
[....]
> 
> Is PPP part of the an OS?
> 


Jason,

Such software is borderline, in my opinion.
The PPP software can be regarded as functionally
part of the kernel although it is structurally
part of user-space.
More difficult programs to classify are "kerneld",
"kswapd", "ld", "kapm", and so forth.
Such software is pretty clearly part of the kernel.

As I say in my comments, it all comes down to what
you define the OS to be. RMS chooses a definition
which coincidentally happens to be in the interests
of GNU. I.e. he chooses the boundary to contain
linux kernel plus much GNU software, but not the
other 97% of a typical OS distribution.

Here are some possible choices:

---------------------------------------------
OS definition			how much GNU
---------------------------------------------
kernel only			almost no GNU
kernel + GNU utilities		lots of GNU
typical linux distribution	about 3% GNU
---------------------------------------------

It's pretty difficult to define it to make GNU the
primary code contribution. 
RMS would probably include "gcc" as a part of the OS.
But he would not include the X window system.

Anyway, it's all a matter of what "operating system"
means, and what you _want_ it to mean.

If you look at a book on operating systems, you probably
won't find compilers described as part of the operating
system. In fact, as of a few years ago, Solaris was
sold with no compiler at all. It was unbundled and you had
to buy a licence for it separately.
I think this proves that compilers are not part of the
code base of an OS.

It could be argued that the X window system is part of the
OS device driver software, because it is used for driving the
GUI device. It is structurally almost entirely external
to the OS, but it is as much a device driver as PPP.

But the X Window System is not part of the GNU codebase,
and yet it is a large chunk of open source software which
is central to the success of linux.

Personally, I would be more tempted to describe linux as
linux/X rather than GNU/linux.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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