Re: Distro name

["Jason Self" <jason@bluehome.net>]

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Ludovic Courtès said:

> The problem is that “GNU” is (supposedly) synonym for GNU/Hurd, or
> at least for the operating system.

> I think it makes sense to distinguish the OS from the distro, no?

Hmm. It might make sense to differentiate when a third party is
involved, but not when the GNU Project itself is doing it.
(Reference "GNU Hurd is not the same as GNU/Hurd" [0].)

"However, such third-party distributions are distinct from what an
official complete GNU system release would be; and thus we often call
them GNU/Hurd for clarity, similar to GNU/Linux or GNU/kFreeBSD."

Does it make sense to say "Yes it's all GNU (except for any non-GNU
dependencies that those GNU packages may have), yes it uses the GNU
Project infrastructure, yes it's being worked on by GNU folks, but
not it's not GNU. We're distributing something else."

I guess it depends on what you define an "an official complete GNU
system release" to be. That would ultimately have to come from RMS,
of course, but if the only difference is the kernel (but both kernels
are official GNU packages) and the distro offered the option of using
both of them, the line seems perhaps a little bit more blurry in that
regard.

[0] http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2011-q2-ps.html