The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[gnu.announce] The FSF is no longer sponsoring Debian



Hi all,

due to requests, I'm forwarding this post to debian-private.

Enjoy :-) .

Emilio.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu>
Subject: The FSF is no longer sponsoring Debian
Newsgroups: gnu.announce,gnu.misc.discuss,comp.os.linux.misc
To: info-gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 00:27:37 -0400
Followup-To: gnu.misc.discuss
Message-ID: <gnusenet199604280427.AAA00388@delasyd.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
Distribution: world
Path: bee.uspnet.usp.br!lakesis.fapesp.br!fnnews.fnal.gov!uwm.edu!news.moneng.mei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!ai-lab!prep.ai.mit.edu!gnu
Lines: 82
Xref: bee.uspnet.usp.br gnu.announce:145 gnu.misc.discuss:4645 comp.os.linux.misc:77805

	      The FSF is no longer sponsoring Debian


Two years ago, the FSF decided we wanted to distribute a version of
the GNU system using the Linux kernel.  The planned GNU kernel (the
Hurd) was not ready, and Linux was; people were starting to combine
Linux with the GNU system to make runnable complete systems, and these
were clearly useful.  We wanted to get involved with supporting and
distributing such a system.

We wanted an integrated system that was easy to install, not a
collection of sources that each user had to compile.  We also wanted a
system that was not associated with any particular commercial company.
Ian Murdock had started to put together a such system, called Debian,
and he sought the FSF's sponsorship.  He hoped that integrating Debian
would serve as preparation for integrating the GNU system, and he
hoped to be involved in that job.  We agreed that the FSF would
sponsor Debian development, and for part of that time, one year, Ian
was on the FSF full-time paid staff.  The FSF looked forward to
distributing Debian on a CD-ROM.

We decided jointly to call the system "Debian GNU/Linux".  Many people
think that name referred to the FSF's sponsorship--that it said that
Debian was the one "Linux system" chosen by the GNU project.  Debian
*was* the one we had chosen, but that is not what the name meant.

"GNU/Linux" is short for "Linux-based GNU system"; it means a
combination of Linux, which is a kernel, with (a variant of) the GNU
system.  Most people call these combinations "Linux systems", in
effect identifying the whole system with the kernel.  We would rather
make that distinction clear.  We want people to be aware that these
complete systems are pretty much the same GNU system we've been
assembling for a decade.

The GNU project set out in 1984 to develop a complete free Unix-like
system.  We found some free components available (including X and
TeX), pushed for others to be made free (some BSD software), and wrote
the parts that were missing (these, strictly speaking, are the GNU
software), all so we could put them together to make a complete
system--the GNU system.

Debian is not the only combination of Linux and GNU.  Slackware is
also one.  So are many commercial system distributions such as Red Hat
and Yggdrasil--they are all combinations of the Linux kernel and a
variant GNU system.  We call all of them Linux-based GNU systems, and
we wish their distributors would, too.

We originally hoped that Debian would be ready for a CD-ROM in early
1995.  Like many software projects, Debian took much longer than
expected; it still isn't ready.  A delay is not a disaster, but in the
mean time, a more serious problem has arisen.

This March, Ian Murdock stepped down as leader of Debian development,
saying that he was too busy with school to do the job properly.  The
people now working on Debian do not want the FSF as a sponsor.
They've said that the FSF can use Debian on an as-is basis, and can
make suggestions to them, but they have rejected any closer
relationship.

The present developers have also changed the name of the project; they
now call Debian a "Linux system".  It is still a combination of the
Linux kernel with a variant GNU system, but unlike Ian Murdock and the
FSF, they don't wish to affirm this in the name.

These decisions imply that the FSF is no longer sponsoring Debian.

It's not clear whether the FSF should still plan to distribute a
Debian CD.  When Debian is ready, we can distribute it if we want to.
However, now that we are no longer a sponsor of Debian, this would
serve only part of the purpose that we originally hoped for.

Meanwhile, the Hurd continues to advance; it now supports NFS, and its
developers use it regularly for its own development.  They can even
debug Hurd servers with GDB while GDB uses those same servers to
access files.  (For more info about the Hurd, see the unofficial Hurd
web page, http://www/cs/pdx.edu/~trent/gnu/hurd/index.html.)

So we may yet distribute a version of Debian, or we may make our first
complete system distribution a Hurd-based GNU system.  We haven't
decided yet.


------- End of forwarded message -------