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

Richard Stallman
2003-01-09T23:07:18Z

Do you actually buy your own bullshit here? If so, that's sad. I used to
respect you.

One wonders what it is you thought I had done, when you respected me
for it ;-).

I'd like to see you put your money where your mouth is

I've dedicated my life to free software since 1984, and have been
working for the cause more than full time, all these 19 years. I
think that counts as "putting my money where my mouth is" for the
movement.

If it doesn't, then you have set a standard so high that perhaps
nobody in the world qualifies.

- PROVE
that GNU (not just people who have release GPL'd software) contributed most
of the work to say Slackware, or Debian, or Red Hat.

Let's be careful. I don't say that the GNU software packages were
most of the early GNU/Linux system. They were, however, the largest
contribution of any single project. Probably they still are.

GNU, the system we were developing, was most of the early GNU/Linux
system in 1992. GNU in 1992 included non-GNU packages such as X11,
and TeX.

If we look at the GNU packages alone rather than the GNU system as a
whole, they were a large fraction of the early GNU/Linux system. The
specific data point I have comes from Adam Richter, who maintained an
early distro. In 1995, he counted up the code and found that GNU
packages added up to 28% of his distro. Linux, the kernel, was 3% of
that distro.

I would expect that both GNU code and Linux make up smaller fractions
of current GNU/Linux distros, because so many other programs have been
added over the years. It's a good thing that so many free programs
have been developed, and that so many people have contributed, but
this doesn't change the system's history. It started out as the
combination of GNU and Linux.