And even then a lot of pieces were missing, so I decided to write them myself.
From amateur C student, I had to turn into semi-serious C programmer. Turned out I liked it.
The skarnet.org project was born this year, out of sheer spite. And I have RMS to thank for it.
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After nights of blood (literally - PC hardware back then was not hand-friendly), sweat and tears, close to one year later, the antah server - first host of skarnet.org - booted on a Linux kernel to a shell without a single piece of GNU software.
I was ready.
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The 2001 Free Software Convention was very similar to the 2000 one. Already, I was starting to notice that this world does not evolve rapidly.
I saw the same faces, had the same conversations, heard the same pitches.
I got another batch of free T-shirts. Elisabeth, I love you.
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I attended the RMS speech, which was more or less the same, with the same dynamics. But this time my mind wasn't swept away in the great ideals of sharing the software. And when you're not partaking in the collective dream, it becomes clear how much of a cult these events are.
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And then my moment happened. I had a legit question for RMS, but I don't remember what it was. It does not matter, because I knew I would never get to ask it in full anyway.
I started my question with "I use Linux."
Obviously, he cut me immediately. But I held up a hand.
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'No. I use Linux, the kernel. I do not use GNU. There is no GNU software running on my machine, the userspace is made of other software bricks. When I say "Linux", I mean exactly what I say.'
He stared at me, open-mouthed, and did not say a word for 5 seconds.
It was GLORIOUS.
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Around me, my friends were giggling. I did not have a whole room, but I had a few people. That was something.
Eventually RMS said something like "Okay, well, you proved a point. However, this is a pretty rare occurrence; on practically all machines, the GNU system..."
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Replying to
He conceded your point. What more do you want? He's still going to be right nearly 100% of the time going forward...
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Vast majority of Linux deployments are non-GNU and that's increasingly the case. AOSP, Alpine and embedded Linux are all major contributors to that.
Clang and LLVM are increasingly widely adopted as a replacement for GCC and binutils too, including for the Linux kernel itself.
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Linux has been enormously successful in embedded and mobile without GNU. GNU was there for the success on servers but that's changing.
Linux on a desktop or laptop will still typically have glibc, but ChromeOS did move to Clang/LLVM, and others are starting to think about it.
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Most developers are avoiding copyleft and there's an increasingly strong culture of permissive licensing in most ecosystems. Take a look through projects in Rust, TypeScript, Kotlin, etc.
Copyleft does little for sustainability or actual ethical development / usage of software.