PCMech Forums - View Single Post - why do people post just for the heck of it

Xayd · 08-07-2000, 04:24 PM

I agree mairving. If I wanted mundane discussion about open source, I could find it easily somewhere else. There are tons of sites full of it.

I also disagree with the assumption that this is only a "tech help" board. Again, if I wanted to participate in such a mundane environment as people saying "x is my problem, help is appreciated", I could find plenty of it somewhere else.

This board is the closest thing to "conversation" that I've seen with "technical oriented" boards.

And the "command line junky" comment was posted in jest, and if someone can't take a joke, perhaps that person should avoid human contact and casual conversation, which can be done very successfully on most of the "open source" help forums.

Here's a sweeping statement that I think holds pretty true...

I find that the active member of the open source community on average thinks he or she is better than everyone else, simply by virtue of learning how to compile a kernel from How-To docs. Their hatred of "user friendliness" and other "graphical" operating systems is more political in nature than practical. Sure, everyone can play in the open source sandbox, great. All you have to do is read through 334537094578039475 doc pages and learn how to sift through their beaurocratic means of organizing everything they take part in.

At this point you'll surely raise your "it isn't supposed to be EASY" fist, but take note of the fall of Linuxcare. The internal bickering and whining and overall childishness by the open source side of the management of that company doomed it from the get go. There are a thousand and one theoretical assumptions made by the open source crowd every day about the rest of the "proprietary" world. It's when accurate theoretical assumptions get made back at them that they get riled up.

I'll still use my favorite distro because of its stability and functionality, but if Linux ever wants to achieve real potential, some very core assumptions and ideas must change within the open source community. Top of that list being that they are not by virtue of existence better than anyone else, neither do they have the right to pass judgement on anyone else because they don't make any money, and the others do.

The current situation is, if I want total ease of use and good stability, I buy NT or a MAC. If I need something for a large network, then I'm the company with money to spend, so I buy Solaris and the hardware and support from Sun to go with it.

If I'm the one in a thousand computer users that likes to tinker, or the one in a million who just likes his OS to be stable for the (very few) supported games, I get Linux.

The open source people have been excluding themselves from the rest of the world, purposefully, for years. Because of who and what they are, they'll continue to do so, I'm sorry to say. I'll keep tinkering and playing with my Red Hat partition, and I still like it for its stability, but Linux will never be a significant threat to other "proprietary" operating systems, due to the egoes and attitudes that contribute to it. In essence, they are what they claim to hate.

Xayd

[This message has been edited by Xayd (edited 08-07-2000).]

08-07-2000, 04:24 PM	#4
Xayd Member (13 bit) Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: nowhere.com Posts: 4,819	I agree mairving. If I wanted mundane discussion about open source, I could find it easily somewhere else. There are tons of sites full of it. I also disagree with the assumption that this is only a "tech help" board. Again, if I wanted to participate in such a mundane environment as people saying "x is my problem, help is appreciated", I could find plenty of it somewhere else. This board is the closest thing to "conversation" that I've seen with "technical oriented" boards. And the "command line junky" comment was posted in jest, and if someone can't take a joke, perhaps that person should avoid human contact and casual conversation, which can be done very successfully on most of the "open source" help forums. Here's a sweeping statement that I think holds pretty true... I find that the active member of the open source community on average thinks he or she is better than everyone else, simply by virtue of learning how to compile a kernel from How-To docs. Their hatred of "user friendliness" and other "graphical" operating systems is more political in nature than practical. Sure, everyone can play in the open source sandbox, great. All you have to do is read through 334537094578039475 doc pages and learn how to sift through their beaurocratic means of organizing everything they take part in. At this point you'll surely raise your "it isn't supposed to be EASY" fist, but take note of the fall of Linuxcare. The internal bickering and whining and overall childishness by the open source side of the management of that company doomed it from the get go. There are a thousand and one theoretical assumptions made by the open source crowd every day about the rest of the "proprietary" world. It's when accurate theoretical assumptions get made back at them that they get riled up. I'll still use my favorite distro because of its stability and functionality, but if Linux ever wants to achieve real potential, some very core assumptions and ideas must change within the open source community. Top of that list being that they are not by virtue of existence better than anyone else, neither do they have the right to pass judgement on anyone else because they don't make any money, and the others do. The current situation is, if I want total ease of use and good stability, I buy NT or a MAC. If I need something for a large network, then I'm the company with money to spend, so I buy Solaris and the hardware and support from Sun to go with it. If I'm the one in a thousand computer users that likes to tinker, or the one in a million who just likes his OS to be stable for the (very few) supported games, I get Linux. The open source people have been excluding themselves from the rest of the world, purposefully, for years. Because of who and what they are, they'll continue to do so, I'm sorry to say. I'll keep tinkering and playing with my Red Hat partition, and I still like it for its stability, but Linux will never be a significant threat to other "proprietary" operating systems, due to the egoes and attitudes that contribute to it. In essence, they are what they claim to hate. Xayd [This message has been edited by Xayd (edited 08-07-2000).]