__/ [ [H]omer ] on Monday 16 April 2007 23:50 \__
> Verily I say unto thee, that ed spake thusly:
>> On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:47:47 +0100
>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>> You have to read this report with knowledge about context. This comes
>>> from a man who runs the most obscure distros (Linuxes and BSDs) and
>>> almost intentionally breaks stuff. He takes the right approach by
>>> showing that every piece of software has design bugs (he'll even
>>> complain about button sizes and colours), which leads to /improving/
>>> things. This report can be used as a guidebook to the betterment of
>>> open source. Don't get this guy started on Vista or Leopard. Rest
>>> assured he'd rip them to pieces! But he concentrates on *nix, as a
>>> acritic, not a reviewer. Each blog item of his (about 10 a day) is a
>>> rant.
>
>> oh it's good to get a descent bug report... but shouldnt he be sending
>> that to the dev mail lists?
>
> Precisely.
>
> Bitching publicly about closed-source software, where the user is just a
> "customer" with zero control, is one thing (name and shame), but in the
> FOSS world there is no need for these public rants against FOSS. Just
> take it directly to the developers on the mailing list, and if your rant
> wins the consensus then it will change things. In fact it goes further
> than even *that*. The nature of FOSS is such that one doesn't need to
> follow *anyone* else's dictum at all. Do it your own way, ignore
> everyone else. Make your own distro, roll your own packages, please
> yourself and do what you like, if that's what you want. Just don't
> forget about those who made it possible in the first place.
>
> The author may be a Linux *user*, but he is still trapped in the
> proprietary mindset, just like the rest of the dinosaurs. It's a brand
> new day, and things work differently in the 21st century, but that old
> dog can't learn new tricks. He's stuck in a timewarp, where software is
> about "companies", corporate identities, profits, business management,
> takeovers, domination, buyouts, and a whole prehistoric lost world of
> concepts entirely meaningless to FOSS.
>
> Public rants against FOSS is just playing into the hands of its
> detractors. It's damaging, completely unnecessary, and liable to get the
> author labelled as a Microsoft Shill.
>
> I have my own reservations about various decisions in FOSS development,
> and I voice those concerns in the appropriate forums. The most recent
> example was some rather underhand manoeuvrings over at Red Hat WRT the
> collection of metrics and the funding for Fedora. I ranted about it,
> sure (both here and on the Fedora mailing list), but what I *didn't* do
> was declare that my concerns were somehow indicative of a general
> failure of the *whole* FOSS community.
>
> Like I said in another post, this guy has simply collated all of the
> most recent anti-FOSS FUD and stitched it together into a huge rant. I
> wonder how many of those issues he was bitching about actually affected
> him *directly* if at all. It was a rant without purpose (of any
> *positive* kind anyway). It was an exercise in attention seeking.
>
> I'm well aware that Radu also advocates Linux (occasionally), and *uses*
> it. He's quite happy to gain all the benefits of using this superior
> Operating System and all the GNU software that accompanies it (both
> beranger.org and thejemreport.com are on Linux hosts), but rather than
> make *constructive* criticism in the *right* forum, make a contribution
> *back* to the community, and really help change things for the better,
> he chooses to publicly damage FOSS with a juvenile rant that will only
> serve to alienate him.
>
> Certainly it's an entertaining read, for those who like to read
> tabloids, which must surely be the kind of demographic he's aiming for.
Attention seeking -- bingo. Linux developers are afraid of him. His posts are
insulting their work very frequently and he is very political as well.
Damaging? No doubt. But it's like a bit collection of endless bug report
that help improve Open Source.
Gael Duval once contacted me. He is just one among those developers whose
hard work is being rubbished by a man who seeks traffic, fame, and 1337ism.
I still enjoy what he writes. I just hope WinTrolls never read it, or reach
his pages via search engines.
--
~~ With kind regards
Roy S. Schestowitz | Linux: does exactly what it says on the tin
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
9:20am up 2 days 8:48, 5 users, load average: 1.15, 1.13, 0.77
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
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