Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
I don't think so. Linus wanted to write an operating system.
According to his book, he didn't initially. He wanted to write a kind of terminal emulator. When adding more and more features, it occurred to him that he was actually writing an OS kernel. Note this was some time after he started.
Almost everything was already there written by GNU.
"Almost everything" is not really true. Even today, the GNU system uses a substantial number of components from BSD, X, TeX, etc. You can call the whole thing the "GNU system" if you like (until the other contributors complain that they are not credited ;-), but you can't claim it was all written by GNU.
He only had to write a kernel and a few other things. He misnamed this to "Linux" and didn't credit GNU.
As others have pointed out, he didn't name it. And even if he did, it would have been no misnomer because what he wrote is really only the kernel. If anyone, you can blame some of the distributors who actually put together systems consisting of Linux, GNU and other things.
FWIW, I'm working on a GNU project myself, so I'm certainly not hostile towards GNU. I can see why the FSF thinks it's getting too little credit, and I also think so often. But the way you try to "advocate" it, based on wrong assumptions and wrong conclusions, is not helping it. Quite the contrary actually, since it "proves" to opponents just how absurd it is. As an example: If the Linux developers really called it "GNU/Linux", someone like Alessandro Rubini would have to speak of "GNU/Linux", even though his system uses only the kernel Linux and no GNU parts. So please, get reasonable and don't try to misname the kernel yourself.
Now if he only had looked further, he had found that there were already people making an OS.
As was quoted here, he knew that.
He could have helped developping the GNU system.
But given his dislike of microkernels and his initial intention (see above), he probably wouldn't.
This was the history lesson for today.
I hope the next one will be better researched.
Frank