Re: A GNU Distribution

[Karl Berry]

    But then I suppose it returns to the question of what would
    set a system released by GNU apart from, say, Trisquel?

FWIW, my thoughts on this are:

1) by being the reification of the GNU system that has been the target
since day one, it will garner significant interest from users and
developers.

2) it would show that GNU has achieved its original goal in a tangible
way, which mere explanations about the free distros, etc., can never
match.

3) as far as I know, all of the free distros (for reference:
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html) except for the
not-very-well-known Dragora, are derived from nonfree distros.  It seems
philosophically undesirable to me for a free system to have a nonfree
system as an upstream.  If an installable GNU OS was built without such
a nonfree upstream distro, that would set it apart.

Of course, none of these are deeply technical points.  But I don't see
the differences between the existing distros as all that deeply
technical, either, so it's not a barrier in my mind.  Indeed, I for one
would much rather have a GNU system be essentially compatible (but
better :) with the standard practice on Unix-like systems for the last
30+ years, than to do something radically different (no meaningful
/bin?!).

FWIW, it has always seemed to me that the biggest issue with making a
GNU OS is simply that there has been no one with the time and energy
needed to bring something into existence.  Many, indeed I would venture
to say nearly all, GNU developers (including myself, sorry to say) are
already well over capacity with existing projects, and putting together
an installable OS is not something that can be done with a few stolen
minutes here and there.

Happy hacking,
karl