Apparently HN is refusing to let me reply to you. So I'm doing it here.<p>The point of saying X.org/Linux is that I could form some ridiculous argument that would require a completely different naming convention. Why don't we call all cars Benz/Cars since Karl Benz holds much of the work that makes cars go? Or all helicopters Da Vinci/Helicopters? Because it's silliness.<p>Calling something GNU/Linux is silly nonsense RMS designed so he could get his beard stroked. If you notice he's never suggested the following:<p>-Linux (powered by GNU)<p>-Linux-GNU<p>-Linux/GNU<p>-Linux - With GNU utilities<p>-Linux - powered by GNU and Xfree86/X.org and the Mozilla foundation.<p>-Linux/GNU/Xfree86|X.org/Mozilla<p>- etc.<p>He's suggested only GNU/Linux. Notice GNU is in front (to remind us all how wonderful GNU is) and the '/' indicates it's interchangeable. Like "do you want ham and/or cheese on your sandwich?". Only GNU != Linux, the two are not interchangeable. The GNU Hurd is a failure. But I bet I could cobble together a GNU free Linux distro for the most part today, even rewriting most of the utilities in a couple weeks, and probably completely in a couple of years once LLVM gets up and going.<p>He wanted to co-opt the relative success that Linux became by formulating an argument such that the only resolution in his mind was to call it GNU/Linux. And instead of building his own system, he built a bunch of the crap for a completed system, then spent the rest of his years dwelling in Emacs and emailing himself wget harvests of websites because for "personal reasons".<p>Really, outside of maybe the compiler toolchain (which is looking to have a short lifespan in the face of LLVM and associated front ends like Clang, are any of the utilities that hard to replicate? (quick answer no, I had to build most of the GNU toolkit from scratch for a single OS course assignment in my undergrad, including a shell, everybody had to do that, it's pretty easy). I'm sorry, but a few dozen utilities like 'ls' and 'cat' don't allow somebody to co-opt somebody else's hard work.