Irony

[Richard Stallman]

    I am of the belief that Linus still would have written the first
    version of Linux, and found a toolset and libc.a to use, whether GNU
    existed, or whether it didn't exist.

Since we are talking about a hypothetical world, not one can be
certain, but the known facts do not provide much support for this.
The only reason there was a wide range of free user-level programs was
because of the GNU Project.  Without us, there would have been only a
few scattered programs he might have found.

Linux itself only became free software when it was rereleased under
the GNU GPL.  Without GNU, that could not have happened.  It is
possible Linus would have released it as free software under some
other license, perhaps the X11 license, but it is just as possible
that Linux would never have been free software.

This doesn't mean Linux could not have succeeded.  It might have found
some kind of success as a non-free kernel in a non-free operating
system.  If so, that would not have had any significance.  What gave
the success of Linux significance was that it succeeded together with
the GNU operating system in a combination that was free software.

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#linuxalone.

By the way, it is not accurate to describe GNU as a "toolset".  Many
GNU programs are tools, but many others are not.  See
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#tools.