[TUHS] Gnu/Stallman (was Bugs in V6 'dcheck')

[Doug McIlroy]

Phil Garcia wrote:
 I've always wondered about something
else, though: Were the original Unix authors annoyed when they learned that
some irascible young upstart named Richard Stallman was determined to make
a free Unix clone? Was he a gadfly, or just some kook you decided to
ignore? The fathers of Unix have been strangely silent on this topic for
many years. Maybe nobody's ever asked?

Gnu was always taken as a compliment. And of course the Unix clone
was pie in the sky until Linus came along. I wonder about the power
relationship underlying "GNU/Linux", as rms modestly styles it.

There are certain differences in taste between Unix and Gnu, vide
emacs and texinfo. (I grit my teeth every time a man page tells me,
"The full documentation for ___ is maintained as a Texinfo file.")
But all disagreement is swept away before the fact that the old 
familiar environment is everywhere, from Cray to Apple, with rms 
a very important contributor.

Doug