I’m sure everyone reading this has heard the debate over whether
that top dog free operating system should be called “Linux” or
“GNU/Linux”, but how big a contribution is GNU or Linux to that
operating system? As conventional wisdom has it, it’s the
availability of applications that make a system valuable, and
this is where free software really shines. Linux contributes
only about 6% to the cost value of a full operating system, but
then again, GNU contributes only about 15%—who do we have to
thank for the remaining 79%?! And why don’t we hear them
complaining about what it’s called? This isn’t really about
“GNU/Linux”, it’s really about asking “Where does free software
come from?” In order to answer that question in any really
definitive way, of course, you first have to collect all the
relevant free software applications into one giant collection so
you can do statistical analysis on them. Wouldn’t it be nice if
somebody would do that for us? Debian GNU/Linux represents the
largest such collection in existe