I forget where it was when I first heard maddog speak.. It was in the linux dark ages though. Solaris, AIX, HPUX, etc. were still grinding along and then there was this upstart Linux. He was talking about how the GNU tools were native and the first thing all the admins did on those other platforms was to build them because UNIX is like playing a piano but the GNU tools turned it in to a fine piano and the keys just felt better, the music was better because of it. I have always loved that analogy.
It's all true AIUI. I had some exposure to Sun boxes early in my Linux career and the stakeholders of those machines always installed the GNU userspace to make them more ergonomic to use and just get everything consistent.
I think it can't be overstated how significant GNU was in making Linux successful. Everyone basically already knew how to use its userspace because GNU had been around for so long and people were already deploying it on the proprietary unices.
It's a bummer to see what's been done to rms/fsf since... practically tarred and feathered.
The free software community, at long last, finally have decided humans are more important than bits and have excised people from their midst who treated bits as more important than humans. This was the right thing to do. I should know. (Sigh.)
