I thought the reasoning why it's legal is that RHEL only gets distributed to people who sign a contract which forbids redistribution: So while the GPL gives them the right to distribute, the contract takes precedence and they are unable to share the code
Until the package adding and removing entropy lits your whole system on fire and you have to untangle dependencies, purge keyring, flush your system and reinstall
I mostly agree with you, but I want to add that GNU was the leader from the start with the aim to create a complete, integrated operating system, rather than just a bunch of unrelated programs tossed together. It was not important to them that all the code was written by GNU, more so that there was a complete free system.
The idea was that one project worked on the display server, another on the desktop environment and so on, with the intent that all come together as "GNU".
And then Linux came and took the name of what GNU anticipated to become.
What a lazy response. You do realize that only one paragraph was an argument for calling it GNU/Linux and the rest of the comment regards other topics you yourself brought up in your last comment? Obviously it is not worth talking to you any longer, not because of diverging views but because of your manners...
the implication that any popular piece of libre software owes anything to Stallman by the mere virtue of being libre is totally wrong.
Considering Linux: Linux was proprietary at first, until Torvalds was inspired by the free software movement to free it, even using GNU's GPL. He later said that making Linux open source was the best decision he ever made, and I'm pretty sure that this would not have happened without the popularity of GNU and the movement reaching him. Linux would've been just another small proprietary kernel. So Torvalds owes a lot to Stallman.
Also, without GNU, Linux would not have been practically usable. Only after the hard work of combining Linux with the already huge codebase of GNU could Linux be meaningfully used and become popular.
In fact, Stallman's version of "open" is deeply intertwined with the American version of what it means to be "free" politically
Well, "open source" gives you exactly the same freedoms as "free software" gives you, so proponents of "open source" can't be that far off ideologically.
it has manifested so many times that there are several open projects with the entire goal of not using GNU components, code or licenses.
The code is already there and it's usable. Not using it because you don't like the person/organization seems a bit... misguided.
The GNU project gave birth to and spread the idea of free software worldwide. Would they not have started with the GNU operating system (they wrote a LOT of code) and doing activism then free software would surely not exist in the magnitude it does today.
The Linux kernel would not be this mainstream at all. Spiritually, this makes every popular free OS a GNU system. Even BSD was only freed because Stallman explicitly requested it.
Credit where credit is due.
Not relevant