:: Re: [DNG] Early Days at Bell Labs
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Auteur: Bruce Perens
Datum:  
Aan: dng
Onderwerp: Re: [DNG] Early Days at Bell Labs
Busybox is GNU. The fact that FSF doesn't own it is immaterial. I developed
it for Debian GNU/Linux.

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:07 AM onefang <onefang_devuan@???> wrote:

> On 2022-01-20 18:40:13, Antony Stone wrote:
> > On Thursday 20 January 2022 at 17:24:46, Peter Duffy wrote:
> >
> > > On Sun, 2022-01-16 at 04:12 -0500, Steve Litt wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECCr_KFl41E
> > >
> > > Thanks for the link to that - brilliant talk. I've always thought that
> > > Brian Kernighan himself was the great communicator in the UNIX group -
> I
> > > wonder whether "The C Programming Language" and "The Unix Programming
> > > Environment" would have happened without his obvious ability to take
> > > abstruse and difficult material and make it accessible.
> > >
> > > If I had one incredibly tiny nit to pick, it would be that he didn't
> > > mention GNU (it appeared once in the slide showing Linus' original
> > > email). Without GNU, it's reasonable to suppose that linux wouldn't
> have
> > > happened.
> >
> > I disagree with "it's reasonable to suppose that".
> >
> > Linus Torvalds was building a system for himself, partly (I believe)
> because
> > he liked Unix but couldn't afford a Unix system of his own, and
> therefore he
> > was of course going to build it using as much free (of charge) software
> as he
> > could.
> >
> > That meant GNU.
> >
> > I think the Unix philosophy and design principles are beautiful, and
> formed
> > the basis of an amazingly efficient system, but some of those principles
> are
> > embodied in Linux and some are embodied in GNU (for example, devices as
> files,
> > and pipes, in the first; and tools such as tr, cut, grep in the second),
> so
> > these days we can't really separate the two - Linux is nothing without
> GNU
> > (although the reverse is not true).
>
> It's entirely possible to have a Linux OS without any GNU software.
> Using such things as busybox and toybox for example.
>
> --
> A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
> coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.
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