Re: RFC - GNU System Distribution

[Alaska Subedi]

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.