Ok, god I feel old now, but man, you youngsters forget history fast.

Let's go a bit _further_ back, some time in the 1960s. The telephone company AT&T was near the height of its power, with loads of cash to spend on research and development. (Ever heard of the name "Bell Labs"?) Anyway, it was there that the portable, multi-user, multi-tasking Unix operating system was created, along with the portable C language in which it was mainly implemented. And in that day, Unix was a relatively lightweight OS as well. This was a killer combination, ensuring that Unix could be adapted to all sorts of hardware relatively quickly.

Unfortunately for AT&T, anti-trust laws in the US made it extremely hard for them to expand into new businesses, such as selling computer operating systems. As such, Unix was used internally, as well as being presented to various universities with a license to use it for research purposes.

Still more unfortunately for AT&T, their baby managed to escape their grasp once it was given out to universities, particularly given that they had provided access to the source code. AT&T eventually tried to pull everything back, and put a trademark on the name "Unix", but that caused a minor rebellion; many folks tried to cobble together unix-like environments that didn't fall under AT&T's restrictions at this time, including Stallman. However, the most successful of these projects was not Stallman's, but rather the effort at Berkely (where items like vi, csh, curses, and the early versions of sendmail were developed).

Still, all these efforts were big projects at big organizations. (Including Stallman's GNU.) It was Andy Tannenbaum's Minix, the little OS you could install on your PC by yourself, that really got the ball rolling on making Unix something personal. Distributions began to evolve around Minix, using various bits and pieces derived from the BSD and GNU projects (as well as others).

My understanding is that the idea he could create his own replacement for Minix is what drove Torvalds to design his own kernel. And, by releasing it with an open-source license, Torvalds pretty much solved the last piece holding back wide adoption of the Unix OS as an alternative to, well, pretty much everything else in the world. (Berkeley tried to compete by making their BSD system more and more free of AT&T, culminating in the 4.4BSD release in the early 90s with 4.4BSD-lite being completely free, but they were never able to quite regain their lead over the Linux-based distributions. Still, BSD is extremely popular, and of course, is running beneath Apple's OSX and iOS operating systems.)

Stallman's drive to make the world open has, indeed, been a core reason for the success of the various GNU utilities and applications, as well as a major impetus behind the rise of Linux-based distributions. But it is not the _only_ factor. The reason why GNU utilities are so powerful, the reason why Linux is so portable, the reason why the OS as a whole is so useful, all go back to the design decisions of those ingenious Bell Labs folks back in the 60s.

I have no idea what either Torvalds or Stallman look like. I doubt almost anybody else does either. From the few Torvalds-written notes I've read over the years, I don't get the impression that Torvalds has the kind of suave social skills you attribute to him either. But it is true that he created a tiny Unix kernel and presented it to the world in a fairly agressive manner, and therefore was successful. (Certainly, Stallman's Hurd has never managed to pick up a lot of support, even though it's a direct competitor to Linux, and was started at approximately the same time.)

Long story short: yes, Linux distributions have lots and lots of GNU-derived software in them. But there is also lots of software in them that were never developed by the GNU project, and the GNU software itself almost all derives from work created elsewhere in the decades before Stallman started his effort.

So no, "GNU/Linux" is not the appropriate way to name a Linux distribution. You can call it that, but you're leaving out a whole lot of other folks who put their lives into the project.

I don't think the two of us will reach a consensus because this very matter has been discussed over and over and nobody was ever convinced to change his opinion.

I think the reason for different opinions here is that some people (like you) look at it from the software side. You look at a typical 2014 GNU/Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Sailfish or Gentoo and count what's left in it of the original GNU project software-wise. You also draw family trees for this software and find it interesting what originated where and who else was involved etc.

That's an absolutely valid point of view and in no way wrong. I understand that from this PoV, the GNU project is like a distant echo that has little to do with the modern userland of a 2014 desktop, let alone mobile phone. (I doubt that from this software-centric PoV the kernel is so much more relevant than other parts and still don't understand the naming 'Linux'. But at least I understand why it's not 'GNU/Linux'.)

Other people (like me) value the idea of free software more than the code as such. I'm not particularly interested in which software was originally written by the GNU project (I always forget) and what project was forked to finally end up as this or that. I don't even use Gentoo, Sailfish or Ubuntu because I think the software they provide is any better or more secure or whatever than Microsoft/Apple. For me, the key part, the one value I'm after is what's expressed in the GPL. The closer we come to GPL and compatible licenses, the better. That's my perspective on software. Give me any piece of software from the early 1970s that later changed its licence from proprietary to GPL and I'll happily attribute it to Richard Stallman and the GNU project, even if RMS doesn't even know this piece of software exists.

Now from my point of view, the one great moment, the Big Bang of what you call the Linux world and I call the GNU/Linux word, was the publication of the GPL. (Remember that it was only the license change to GPL that made the Linux kernel work in commercial environments like Sailfish. Torvalds plans were different originally.) I'd call it 'GNU' only and leave out the 'Linux' part altogether if I could.

Ah, well, my understanding was that Stallman himself was looking at the code in various Linux distributions, and was unhappy that the GNU-derived parts weren't getting as much attention as he had hoped. (Or, at least, that the Linux kernel was getting too much attention.) And so that is why he was trying to change the name. I may be wrong about that, though.

But I understand your point of view. (And yes, from that perspective, Stallman should have chosen to promulgate a name like GPL-Linux, not GNU/Linux. It would have made a lot more sense to me as well, as Linux distributions as a whole are far more dependent on the GPL than they are on all the GNU utilities. Even GCC itself could be replaced if you really had to do it.)

Er, what?!? A very major reason why Linux uptake skyrocketed while projects like Hurd never got off the ground is that Linus balked at supporting GPLv3, which had major anti-commercial language inserted into it. Him dragging his feet and continuing to use GPLv2 for the licensing of Linux is what helped a lot of corporations to remain in the Linux distribution business...

Nope. Hurd was dead (and linux popular) long before the GPLv3. (Which is a cool license; Torvalds just doesn't understand it.) Actually, Hurd was never really alive.

I'm referring to the fact that Torvalds originally had not put the Linux kernel under the GPL, but under a license of his own. This original license said the kernel mustn't be distributed for money. Only later did he change the license to GPL when he was asked to do so.

Ah, well, yes, that is true. (And yeah, that was long before the v2/v3 debate...)

I feel old now, but man, you youngsters forget history fast.

Two notes:
1. Linux kernel doesn't have any 'copyright assignment' policy. This means that Linus CANNOT change the license of Linux kernel by himself. All kernel contributors should agree with it! Therefore, it's practically impossible to change the license of Linux kernel. Its license doesn't include 'or any later version' clause, so nobody can change the license to v3.
2. Hurd doesn't take off, becuase its development was soooooooooo slow. It still has no stable version. So, its license is irrelevant.

UDF can work, but it's not ideal for flash memory I think. Plus until recently it had various weird issues. So it's good as a personal workaround, but not as an industry approach.

UPDATE: Someone suggested a really good idea (I posted it in the request):

Fuzzilogic proposed the same idea.

Re: paying the exFAT license "on demand."

Yes, that would be the perfect solution. In fact, it really is the obvious solution, not just for Jolla, but for any manufacturer trying to deal with the M$ tax. The fact that it has never been done before leads me to believe that Microsoft would never go for it. It's a lot easier for Microsoft to force a given manufacturer to give in to their demands and provide a single lump sum payment, rather than trying to license each user individually.

Jolla can take another approach. Just charge the user who wants exFAT support some $XYZ, and then pay to M$ whatever they are asking already. Not exact, but at least it makes it optional and Jolla can adjust that price periodically to even out the difference.