Re: cURL author receives rude LogJ4 security inquiry

[Jacob Bachmeyer]

Jean Louis wrote:
> * Akira Urushibata <afu@wta.att.ne.jp> [2022-02-22 02:23]:
>   
> [...]
> So I can see that Linus is giving credits to GNU, GCC, Richard
> Stallman, and that he did not know nothing about free software before
> he heard Stallman's speech in Helsinki.
>
> Linux kernel was at that time proprietary.
>
> He liberated kernel due to Stallman's talk.
>
> I can also read a sentence where Linus says on page X: "Richard
> Stallman wants to make everything open source" -- this shows clear
> misunderstanding on side of Linus on what "open source" means and what
> is "free software."
>
> Linus also said: "Richard Stallman deserves monument in his honor for
> giving birth to GPL"
>
> There is quote that he acknowledges that his new system won't be big
> and professional as GNU.
>
> To me I see clear misunderstandings of Linus in his youth when he was
> thinking that by making the kernel he is making "operating system".
>
> It is misunderstanding.
>   

My understanding of the history here is that Linus *was* more-or-less 
making a homebrew operating system at the time.  I remember a quote 
describing Linux:  "My terminal emulator grew legs."

> [...]
>
> And I could not find "strong disagreements with Richard Stallman
> claims" -- not really, that is not my impression. He gives quite good
> credits to GNU, and Richard Stallman and expresses his opinions as
> from viewpoint of somebody who did not know what is free software and
> somebody who mixes "open source" with free software and likes to be
> rather pragmatic person.
>   

There is also some confusion here from the "open source" advocates.  
When I last checked, the Open Source Definition was, in all practical 
respects, essentially equivalent to the Free Software Definition.  As I 
understand, this was intentional because "open source" was intended as 
"free software for moral retards" as an effort to advance the cause of 
software freedom among groups that are allergic to RMS's moral arguments.

There are many ways that effort can go wrong, and this is probably not 
the best time or place to go sifting through them.  :-/

> [...]
> By reading about other operating systems one may find that their
> kernel is usually named different than the operating system.
>   

As I understand, this is fairly unusual and actually a technical advance 
that can be credited to the GNU system.  Granted, it was an advance made 
out of necessity, since GNU had everything *except* a kernel, so the 
pieces *had* to work on foreign systems, but much as Unix was the first 
operating system not bound to its original platform, GNU has been the 
first operating system not bound to a specific kernel.

> [...]
> Me, as non native English speaker, I have hard time understanding this
> sentence:
>   
> > Moreover I stand in a position to state whether Netpbm should be
> > considered an OS component or an application."
> >     
>
> Because you use the word "whether". It is unclear, as that word is
> neither nor, but whether. See:
> "https://www.thefreedictionary.com/whether"; -- so I am not getting
> it. You stand in the position to state... that Netpbm should be
> considered an OS component or you stand in the position to state it
> shold be considered application. There are two choices and I can't
> understand that.
>   

As a native English speaker, I understand that sentence to mean (at 
least in the dialect I grew up with) that he is asserting expertise to 
declare which of these (presumed mutually incompatible) statements is true:

1.  Netpbm is an OS component.
2.  Netpbm is an application.

In my view, I am unsure how this is actually a meaningful distinction 
for a portable package -- Netpbm could be an OS component on one system 
and an application on another, so I still scratch my head, but that is 
how I understand his statement.  Alternately, we could resolve that by 
declaring that Netpbm is one or the other, but introduce the categories 
of "bundled application" for an application included as an OS component 
and "portable component" for an OS component installed as an application 
on a different system.



-- Jacob