Accusations, accusations, always accusations

[Richard Stallman]

Earlier on in the thread I wrote this:

	  If I was to replace all of Solaris's utilities with the GNU
	equivalents, would anybody call it GNU/Solaris?

    I for one would not call it that.  Copying just the utilities from GNU
    is not enough of a reason to say "the result is basically the GNU
    system."  What GNU/Linux has in common with GNU is much more than a
    bunch of utilities.  If you took the kernel of Solaris and made it
    work in the GNU system, that would produce GNU/Solaris.

The point was that installing the GNU utilities people are likely to
install on a Solaris system, or even all of them, is a far cry from
replacing all of the system except the kernel with another whole
system minus kernel.  And the GNU system is more than a set of GNU
"utilities".

However, someone now insists that I meant something else entirely, and
persistently asks people to condemn me as a "hypocrite" for a meaning
I did not intend.  Well, you see what I actually wrote, and you can
judge for yourself.

You've seen a bout of the abuse that I receive.  I've received a few
handfuls of them, and on many other occasions I've seen people
pointedly refuse to give the GNU Project credit.  Given the situation,
I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping my temper.  (I make a
great effort.)  On only a few occasions I have raised my voice in
response; one of them was in public, last March.

That has been seized on to accuse me with; some people call me a
monster for having not quite lost my temper in public.  But the anger
I expressed then was mild and brief compared with what they regularly
say about me in public.  Perhaps they should start making an effort to
control their tempers.

Meanwhile, I will respond, not in kind, but by calmly continuing to
inform people that the system often called "Linux" is a derivative of
the GNU system, and asking them to give the GNU Project credit for
being its principal (though not its only) developer.