Why not call the system “Linux” anyway, and strengthen Linus Torvalds role as posterboy for our community?
Linus Torvalds is the “posterboy” (other people’s choice of word, not ours) for his goals, not ours. His goal is to make the system more popular, and he believes its value to society lies merely in the practical advantages it offers: its power, reliability and easy availability. He has never advocated freedom to cooperate as an ethical principle, which is why the public does not connect the name “Linux” with that principle. Linus publicly states his disagreement with the free software movement’s ideals. He developed non-free software in his job for many years (and said so to a large audience at a “Linux”World show), and publicly invited fellow developers of Linux, the kernel, to use non-free software to work on it with him. He goes even further, and rebukes people who suggest that engineers and scientists should consider social consequences of our technical workârejecting the lessons society learned from the development of the atom bomb. There is nothing wrong with writing a free progr
