@clacke @lanodan @GNUxeava @babble_endanger The other thing you have to remember is that in the late 1980's early 1990's when GNU took off, sysadmins loved the consistancy, reliability, performance, & features introduced by GNU. You got a UNIX machine: You installed GNU on it.
This was so common that noone saw any reason to explicitly state the "GNU" in GNU+Linux! RMS complaining is him being a victim of his own success.