Is Linux “GNU”?

Last week Griff Palmer thanked me for not getting all worked up over nits in his article on Linux, but wondered if he’d hear from Richard Stallman (RMS to those not in the know) because he called it “Linux” instead of “GNU/Linux” (those difficult editors, again).

Well, sure enough, just as Griff predicted, RMS struck back with exactly that complaint – “For months now, my home machine has run nothing but Linux. but that cannot be true. Linux by itself would not run without the GNU operating system. He must be talking about GNU/Linux and calling it Linux, as often happens.” But are we being a bit loose with history here?

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