Re: Nvidia and its choice to read the GPL "differently"

Richard B. Johnson
2003-01-13T14:22:41Z

On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Richard Stallman wrote:

> > It would be reasonable, if not for the fact that it gives the wrong
> > idea of who developed the system and--above all--why.
>
> Then -==YOU==- are completely mistaken about why -==I==- contributed
> to Linux (the kernel & the system).
>
> By now, many people have contributed for many reasons, to Linux and to
> the GNU/Linux system. I do not claim to speak for you; I am talking
> about why the system exists in the first place. It is not a haphazard
> collection of components. In the GNU Project, we systematically wrote
> one component after another. Our goal was a completely free system,
> and we took step after step to reach it.
>
> Thank you for contributing, whatever your motives were.

How dare you? You have no privilege to thank anybody for their
contributions to Linux. You just don't get it. It doesn't matter
how many times you repeat lies. They are still lies. You are
lying to persons who know you are lying. They will never be
convinced because they know what the truth is.

As previously shown, most of the programs that "come with" Linux,
and therefore are part of the "Operating System" to which you lay
claim, were developed by students at the University of California,
Berkeley. They even contain a Copyright notice, embedded in the
executable files. Anybody can do:

strings /usr/bin/* | grep Regents
strings /bin/* | grep Regents

...and see all the copyright notices embedded in the programs to
which you now claim credit.

You may have revamped or made derivative works of these Unix
programs. Of course you have a right to do this as long as you
retain the original Copyright notice. This simply means that
you copied something that had already been done. That doesn't
give you the right to claim any credit. You just made a copy
of operating system components and, perhaps, altered or even
improved them.

So, again, please take your lies elsewhere. That's what they are
and anybody who has been involved with Linux knows this. If you
want to rewrite history, I suggest you make a new list, perhaps

GNU/Stallman@vger.gnu.org

These words are my own.