Alan's Ramblings - linux tag

It seems The Register reads Planet Sun too...

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 06:32:33 GMT

It seems the staff of The Register read PlanetSun.org as well - they've quoted Geoff Arnold's blog entry on the momentous Sun/Microsoft rapprochement in this article. Odd, seeing as though Andrew Orlowski, the author of The Register article has previously expressed his disdain for all things blogish.

Update: Seems the above isn't true: Geoff tells me he often corresponds with Andrew Orlowski (see comments below). Shame :-)

According to the article, a Sun employee has mailed The Register saying that "this whole thing has my gut in knots" and "I used to follow Scott blindly". Sheesh, get a grip man, it's just a business decision. Although I really like Sun and consider it's the best company that I've worked for (and I've worked for a few), it is when all is said and done, just a business - not a goddam religion.

The other thing that's tickled me about the whole Sun/Microsoft deal is the 'You just can't win' aspect. For a long time Sun has had lawsuits pending against Microsoft, which was widely considered to be A Good Thing and About Time Someone Got Some Money from Them. Now Sun has trousered the money, it's seen as some kind of betrayal, some kind of humungous corporate sell-out. Well excuse me, but what exactly was the point of the legal action in the first place?

The same thing applies to the other part of the deal, the agreement to work more closely with Microsoft. Again, for a long time Scott McNealy has been criticised as being too focused on being anti-Microsoft, too intransigent in his dealings with them. He's obviously listened, and taken it to heart - which must have been personally difficult as he will have known the likely reaction - and gone and built some bridges. Now as a result he's weak, he doesn't know what he stands for, he's a Microsoft lickspittle, he can't possibly continue at Sun because it represents too much of a culture shock for him to cope with and so on.

Lastly I've been very amused by the way the way the Linux Klan are so self-absorbed (I think "up themselves" is the exact phrase I'm looking for) that they can't believe that there is anything in the IT world isn't centred entirely on them. As I've said before, they are convinced that "There is a global conspiracy which is striving to destroy Linux", and they seem only to be able to see the announcement as some sort of attack on Linux. One very prominent member of the Open Source world phoned up one of my colleagues after the announcement last Friday and asked him "What does Microsoft's d**k taste like", which I think nicely demonstrates the mindset of the radical wing of the Linux movement.

I'm still desperately trying to convince myself that the vast majority of the Linux community don't subscribe to this extremist "Them or Us" manifesto, and that as with many things in life, moderate people are usually exactly that - moderate - and so they don't get a hearing. Unfortunately the Linux community seems to becoming dominated by these bigots - I'm not sure how many of them actually contribute anything except copious quantities of invective.

Linux flame bait

Tue, 30 Sep 2003 09:52:49 GMT

Having recently being on the receiving end of a particularly nasty piece of unprovoked and downright abusive flaming on the #perl IRC channel, I decided another spoof book cover would be cathartic, so here it is.

Before I get even more flames directed at me, let me quite clearly state that I have nothing against Linux, it is very good at what it does, and is all the more remarkable for being developed by a large cooperative group of altruistic people.

However what I can't abide are the clueless individuals who seem to have adopted Linux as some sort of surrogate religion. It seems to me that the most vocal of these misguided bigots have often never contributed anything to any open-source project. They are quite happy to take advantage of the work contributed by others without giving back anything to the community - but then again, most of them probably don't even have the ability to contribute in a constructive way anyway.

I've observed that these people generally seem to have a common set of dogmas:

Nothing existed before Linux.
Everything of any importance was invented by Linux.
Everything that is not Linux is Evil.
There is a global conspiracy which is striving to destroy Linux.
Anyone who actually earns their living writing software is a pawn of an Evil Empire.
World domination and the destruction of the Evil Empires is the destiny of Linux.

In the real world these people would be prime candidates for psychiatric treatment, but in the alternate reality that these people exist in, this behaviour is considered to be "normal".

As I said, I have no gripe about "Linux the OS", just "Linux the religion".

There, that's my little rant over - I feel much better :-)

How to be an Evil Linux Ubergeek

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 11:26:27 GMT

"Linux gives us the power we need to crush those who oppose us" - check out Everyone looks spiffy with a Tux (requires Flash). I'm sure I've met Steve before (several times ;-)