2:24 p.m.
So keeping the GNU name is possible without being associated with
the
FSF or the GNU project.
Right: the name has never been trademarked -- I heard that in the early days of Cygnus
either John Gilmore or gumby offered to Stallman to trademark the GNU name for the FSF,
but he was not interested.
It's more a matter of association with toxic orgs, so there is a bit of a rush to get
many gnu projects dissociated from the FSF so that at some point pundits will start
writing headlines like "GNU Projects no longer associated with the FSF" and
establish it as an independent name.
Otherwise when we urge someone to work on or use the GNU Scientific Library (or other GNU
projects) they might shy away.