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1 year agoThe GNU kernel was not originally supposed to be called the Hurd. Its original name was Alix—named after the woman who was my sweetheart at the time. She, a Unix system administrator, had pointed out how her name would fit a common naming pattern for Unix system versions; as a joke, she told her friends, “Someone should name a kernel after me.” I said nothing, but decided to surprise her with a kernel named Alix.
As the OSI says in the post linked above:
A lot of companies are trying to redefine what “open source” means. And regrettably, this is probably something that was inevitable with a name as open to interpretation as “open source”, but it’s unfortunate that the OSI was denied the trademark for the term. If they owned the trademark, nobody would believe projects like ElasticSearch and MongoDB are open source when they do not meet the Open Source Definition (OSD), because those companies wouldn’t be able to claim they are.
Open source was never about preventing people from making a profit. That sounds more like the original Linux license, where Linus Torvalds didn’t want money to change any hands in the process of conveying the software. I can’t imagine how much worse things would be if Linus never transitioned to a license that met the OSD. My belief is that there is nothing wrong with making money so long as the software meets the OSD. I know at least the GNU Project actively encourages people to sell free software.