Re: A purely GNU system?

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Andreas,

On Sat, 2019-11-09 at 22:55 +0100, Andreas Enge wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 09, 2019 at 03:15:16PM -0600, Joel Sherrill wrote:
> >     Is glibc purely GNU?  It borrows code from a variety of sources and
> >     was not written completely from scratch.  (Although there are many
> >     parts which are unique to glibc, too.)
> >     What about GNU tar?  It started out as pdtar.
> > GCC shares a lot of libraries and components with other projects which are 
> > not
> > necessarily GNU.
> 
> Thanks for your replies! Indeed, the pleasure of free software - we
> can "remix"!

And while remixing we might make things more GNU :)

I think what is interesting is how we remix to create GNU. What we
(re)use, what we reject, and why. Take GNU linux-libre [1] or GNU
IceCat [2] for example. Are those "purely GNU"? That is probably the
wrong question. What is interesting is why it is necessary to have GNU
"forks" of those projects. How we define our relationship with the
"upstream" projects. And how we influence and cooperate with similar
projects like the Debian free Linux kernel [3] or the PureOS
PureBrowser [4].

Cheers,

Mark

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/linux-libre
[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/icecat
[3] https://www.debian.org/News/2010/20101215
[4] https://puri.sm/posts/the-four-browser-freedoms/