> GNU did not have a working system until Linus released Linux in 1992. They had pieces and components which were worthless on their own.
People were installing GNU onto existing Unix systems because GNU was better than they were distributed with. Maybe they did that with components of BSD Net/1 - no one has ever told me they did but it probably happened - but that was definitively post GNU.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this matters so much to the debate. Stallman was reacting to a change. He rambled politically and wrote some code to back it up because he used to be able to do things, and now he could only do them if he would write some code and win some allies.
People were installing GNU onto existing Unix systems because GNU was better than they were distributed with. Maybe they did that with components of BSD Net/1 - no one has ever told me they did but it probably happened - but that was definitively post GNU.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this matters so much to the debate. Stallman was reacting to a change. He rambled politically and wrote some code to back it up because he used to be able to do things, and now he could only do them if he would write some code and win some allies.