"Linux and GNU" is stallman's canonical statement on the GNU/Linux naming controversy, first published in 1997 and updated periodically since. It argues that the operating system commonly referred to as "Linux" should properly be called "GNU/Linux," because the Linux kernel developed by linus-torvalds runs on top of the GNU operating system — the libraries, compiler, shell, and utilities that stallman and the gnu-project had been building since 1983.
The essay's argument is historical and principled. When linus-torvalds released the Linux kernel in 1991, it filled the one missing piece of an otherwise largely complete GNU system. The resulting combination — GNU tools plus Linux kernel — gave users a complete free operating system. But because linus-torvalds's kernel carried his name and the gnu-project's contributions were invisible to casual users, the entire system came to be called "Linux," erasing a decade of work by stallman and hundreds of GNU contributors.
stallman frames the naming issue not as personal vanity but as a matter of political clarity. When people call the system "Linux," they are unaware that they are using software produced by a movement with specific goals and values — the four-freedoms, copyleft, and the ethical framework of the free-software-definition. Calling it "GNU/Linux" connects the software to its origins in a deliberate political project, making the history and the values visible.
The essay also addresses the tension with linus-torvalds, who has been publicly indifferent or hostile to the GNU/Linux framing and to the software-freedom-vs-open-source distinction more broadly. stallman argues without personal animus: Torvalds's contributions are real and significant, but they do not change the historical and structural facts about what the system consists of.
The gnu-linux-naming dispute is treated more fully in the-gnu-project-essay and remains a live controversy in free software communities. eric-raymond's cathedral-and-bazaar-raymond contributed to the "Linux" naming convention by using it throughout, as did the open-source-definition-schism of 1998 that brought the system to wide attention under the "open source" banner. The essay is stallman's ongoing effort to correct what he regards as a historical and political misattribution.