Re: [tlug] ftp client for linux [C&C][1]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Nguyen Vu Hung writes:

 > Look at what the GNU Project have done so far, it is a beauty, isn't it?

The GNU Project has done very little, actually, compared to what it
sticks its name on.  The default "GNU system" that most users see
these days includes a Linux kernel, TeX, perl, Python, X11,
Ghostscript, and a large number of utilities taken from BSD.  Some
estimates have the amount of code in the "GNU system" *including* the
toolchain (but not GNOME) that was written by programmers who consider
their primary free software affiliation to be GNU/FSF as low as 10%.

The primary software accomplishment of GNU was done by 1995: to
kickstart the commercialization of free software by making GNU/Linux
distributions possible via the C toolchain (including GNU make as well
as the C compiler, assembler, and linker) and glibc (but not as
distributed by GNU).

Politically, IMO GNU remained a progressive force until about 2002.
Since then it has been conservative (which is not necessarily a bad
thing, if---like rms---you think that the open source movement is the
work of the devil trying to tempt hackers away from that Ol' Tyme
Religion).

 > Gnome as a part of freedesktop.org has showed that it is better
 > than Qt/KDE.  A "G" prefixed world of course better than the "K"
 > one. I mean "G" is not driven by any company.

Neither is K driven by any single company, and it never was (KDE !=
Qt).  And IMO GNOME is less usable and more like Microsoft Windows
than KDE (not the I have a right to an opinion since I actually use
Windows more than either GNOME or KDE).  On the other hand there are
several companies which have substantial influence over individual
GNOME components (just as there are companies playing a similar role
in KDE components).

BTW, AFAIK, GNOME may comply with freedesktop standards better than
KDE does at the moment, but the idea of freedesktop was to be a common
set of standards for all free desktops.  For a long time the KDE/Qt
implementation of XDND was more complete than that of GNOME, for
example.

 > うんと I've read in your previous email that this is a strategic
 > trick:First get the market and make a brand name. What is the
 > connection between Gnome and GNU?

GNU Network Object Model Environment = GNOME.  The name is all you
need.  AFAIK, GNU has no resources of its own; it's just a name.  The
FSF devotes some resources to GNU, but GNU resources are volunteered
by third parties.

 > > Yes, it's one reason, but I think that the politically-driven design
 > > decisions are far more important.

 > Today I have run emacs 23.0 under X ( a little old cvs version ) and
 > saw that emacs seems doensn't  wants arguments(!!!!) [ --version
 > doesn't work], and to make things worse: The first page is divided
 > into 2 parts: The upper part is the content of the file we are open
 > and the bottom shows the "bullshit" :D. But fornunately, we can turn
 > that bullshit off by ticking a checkbox.

Yeah, but it took a thread of a couple hundred messages to get that
checkbox installed.