Re: Brett Glass's postings to mailing.freebsd.chat

[Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>]

At 04:06 AM 3/9/99 -0500, Mark Hinds wrote:
 
>Sorry, the example above is a principal of law as described to me
>by a lawyer friend. 'You' is the abstract, not necessarily you.
>I said it was stretch to go from the bar situation to the news group.

Your message sounded more like YOU walked out of a bar and into this 
group... with a blood alcohol content was still too high for safe
operation of a keyboard. ;-) Tone it down a bit, OK?

>You have concocted a deliberate scheme to re-create the kind of
>relatively spontaneous advocacy which other platforms have created
>naturally. 

"Create?" Nope. No more than Team OS/2, or BMUG, or the organizers
of "Windows Refund Day" (which had little effect except as a publicity
stunt).

>Slime you? How do you connect my possibly inaccurate bsd time frame
>claims to sliming you? 

Your entire message did that.

>The reason I even mentioned freebsd at all was as a reference point for your
>motivation to use what seem to me to be unethical (and probably counter
>productive) tactics to promote freebsd. I personally believe that the
>two groups should not quarrel. The fortune of one probably benefits the
>other.

The GPL, alas, will put programers out of work. Including the dedicated
programmers who are able to work on FreeBSD at night because they have
day jobs.

>Given that freebsd may have some technical and certainly has some
>commercial advantages I assume that the trail blazed by linux may
>prove useful to freebsd. You are the one who wishes to dramatize the
>conflict between the two and create a war where non should be.

The proponents of the GPL have declared a war -- against anyone who
wants to make a living from commercial software. They've said as
much, IN THOSE WORDS. Get the tapes from the LinuxWorld conference
and have a listen. I have tapes from three key sessions here.

>It is a contrived way to simulate the behavior you have noted in other
>user advocacy groups. 

No "simulations" here. Effective advocacy groups all do the same things.
You're embracing an absurd double standard: "When *I* do it, it's grass
roots advocacy. When *you* do it, it's a 'simulation.'"

>There is far too much resemblance to the tactics of MS for my ethical 
>comfort zone.

Oh? I seem to recall that Microsoft used paid writers and shills. I'd
like to assist and organize grass roots supporters who honestly want to 
advocate the product. No subterfuge. No lies. No BS. 

What a concept! Perhaps such honest efforts at PR (unlike those
of many Linux boosters) are so rare that you find it hard to believe 
that it's possible. Or perhaps you find it odd that the goal is
to be inclusive and not toss out the most fanatical supporters.

>If you
>are not encumbered as I am fine, but be forewarned; people don't like to
>find out that they've been manipulated, and (again excluding the
>intentional provocation) such plans have been known to backfire.

No manipulation here at all. The lunatic fringe NATURALLY bashes
the competition. That's what they do whether they're organized or
not. Look at any of the Linux advocacy newsgroups for examples.

>So you do consider it acceptable to have people pretend (you said it
>would be fun to play the 'looney') to bash (people, their tools?),
>and incite flame wars? 

Oh, you mean like Eric Raymond, as Obi-Wan Kenobi, shouting, "We don't
want your damn Windows!" Or Bruce Perens stomping out of the Open Source
consortium and flaming and bashing them on Slashdot. Or Richard Stallman, 
after having been invited to O'Reilly's Open Source Town Meeting, 
insulting the host who paid his way there and accusing him of being 
greedy and evil.

Hmmm. None of that going on in the Linux camp, I see. ;-)

>In addition to finding faults with my character
>and expounding on my thoughts and motivations perhaps you could also
>provide a simple answer to some the questions I have posed. Questions
>are the ones that typically end with '?' (ASCII 0x3f), and which you
>often seem to ignore.

You mean, like, "What's the difference between an elephant?" 

Or, "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

--Brett Glass