Incorrect Quotation - midwest.social
A quotation circulates on the Internet, attributed to me, but it wasn’t written
by me. Here’s the text that is circulating. Most of it was copied from
statements I have made, but the part italicized here is not from me. It makes
points that are mistaken or confused. I’d just like to interject for a moment.
What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently
taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto
itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made
useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components
comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified
version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar
turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called
“Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU
system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people
are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel:
the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other
programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system,
but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete
operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating
system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All
the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux. The
main error is that Linux is not strictly speaking part of the GNU system—whose
kernel is GNU Hurd. The version with Linux, we call “GNU/Linux.” It is OK to
call it “GNU” when you want to be really short, but it is better to call it
“GNU/Linux” so as to give Torvalds some credit. We don’t use the term
“corelibs,” and I am not sure what that would mean, but GNU is much more than
the specific packages we developed for it. I set out in 1983 to develop an
operating system, calling it GNU, and that job required developing whichever
important packages we could not find elsewhere. -Richard Stallman