>> When exactly did GNU ship a complete OS?
> the only people who could run BSD were shops that had a source-code license for the proprietary AT&T Unix.
So -- finally! -- that's the measure of OSS? I must run on non-proprietary systems? And you figure that Linux is the first non-proprietary system in 1991? Not 4.3BSD released in 1989?
And not simply the source code? So -- OSS that runs on Windows or MacOS or VMS is not actually OSS? I wouldn't say so.
I think you can understand my and others reluctance to state definitively Stallman was first, when by a dozen different metrics he wasn't. I'm still trying to understand what he was supposedly first at? First to find a lawyer?
Linux is important. GNU is important. BSD is important. And they remain important. I don't think any of them are made more important by distinguishing only one and not the others. Like -- as much as it pains me to say it, because of how I loath Stallman and the FSF, GCC was more than important to the entire ecosystem for years, until LLVM, it was required.
I want to say around 2006 or 2007 was the first time a 'normal' *nix hacker could install and boot[0] a complete GNU OS[1] and get something resembling work done (ie edit and compile C code in vi or emacs).
[0] without having to to a bunch of bootstrapping steps and other hackery
[1] Technically 'shipped' by Debian rather than GNU/FSF
The fact that BSD was incomplete is relevant because it illustrates the fact that the only people who could run BSD were shops that had a source-code license for the proprietary AT&T Unix.