[UFO Chicago] Re: Brian's Conversion from FreeBSD toDebianandQuestions on X

[Scott Lockwood]

>> Wrong BSD. :-)
> You said "BSD's".  Plural.  OBSD is fair game. Had you said "FreeBSD" or
"NetBSD," I'd have not said anything.  ;-)
> Jesse Becker
> GPG-fingerprint:  BD00 7AA4 4483 AFCC 82D0  2720 0083 0931 9A2B 06A2

Ok - if you want to be pedantic, let's play that game.

Nut bags who make BSD look bad: 1 (Theo)

Nut bags who make Linux/OSS look bad: At least 2  off the top of my head -
ESR, and RMS, and if I wanted to devote even a modicum of thought to it,
I'll bet you I'd have NO difficulty giving you a MUCH longer list. True,
those two in particular are the worst (in my VERY not so humble opinion) but
they are not alone. The whole bitkeeper fiasco comes to mind.

We seem to have this annoying tendency (as a 'group' or 'movement') to pick
up zealots. Zealotry is bad, and prevents social progress, any way you slice
it. It's amazing how, when I've talked to people looking for assistance with
FreeBSD (back when I was new to it) I didn't get "STFU n00b, RTFM Hahaha!
LOL OMG!" like I do 99% of the time in IRC from people who have been using
Linux for far less time than I have. Some of them, I wonder if they have
been alive as long as I've been using Linux! 

I really miss how it was back in 1994, when a good friend of mine was quite
patient, helpful, and willing to come over to my house and help me get
Slackware running on my spiffy beefed up 486DX66 with 16 megs of RAM. It was
worth having to flip all those floppies, just to get Peter Anvin in my
living room to explain things. This was the exact opposite of what happens
most of the time these days when you go into, oh say Gentoo's official
support IRC channel, and get abused by kids who act like they're still 13.

I use Linux daily at work. I use BSD to host my own crap. Both have
strengths, and weaknesses. 

The social environment around Linux is often one of it's biggest weaknesses,
while the BSD license is (again, in my mot at all humble opinion) BSD's
biggest weakness (in that it doesn't encourage forks to share code) - the
people have, for the most part, been nice.

Even on this list, I have had someone zealously give me a ration of crap for
no particularly good reason - though for the most part, being on this list
has been very valuable.

Scott