Thanks for writing Gordon.
'A tutor's life..'
Gordon Findlay wrote:
Rik:
no-one likes a good fight more than I, although the KDE-GNOME things is really
old now. But a good fight requires clear communication.
I am not interested either - insufficient time. So I am filtering KDE
out of my life, as much as is humanly possible.
I've known you a long time, and you know that I admire your efforts to promote
FOSS (or FLOSS, or OSS or whatever your preferred acronym is today).
It has only ever been 'FOSS' from me - like the rest of the world,
beyond tunnel vision (cultural narrowness being a peculiarly kiwi trait).
See 'Codebreakers' for the bigger - global - FOSS picture there.
It is other people's posts that are confusing you.[1]
I've helped you with three Software Freedom Days in the past, and sponsored
them with real money.
Much appreciated. Thanks again.
I know that you have very carefully thought through positions on many things:
OSS, politics, economics to name but three. I'd be interested to hear more
about your position, and the thinking that has lead to it. Over a cup of
coffee, I can usually follow your reasoning, although I don't always agree.
But on this list, your contributions are opaque, cryptic, and (come across
anyway) as unreasoned. That's partly due to the limitations of this medium,
partly due to the way that you use it
Can I ask you Rik, to help me if no-one else, to
- avoid cryptic remarks and in-jokes. Say what you have to say in clear
English.
- state your position clearly
- use more words rather than fewer. Hints don't work!
- ignore conspiracy theories, even involving Ballmer
That's my policy too.
- accept that there will always be disagreements and people will always make
different choices, because that's what this movement is all about
RMS was right (again) when he said that there were, with the creation of
'Open Source' branding, in fact two movements.
- write in complete sentences, with reasonably standard grammatical constructs.
Yes. And to Nick who has made this point before.
It's a technical forum, for technical prose. What interests me isn't the
construction of technical prose. So when I've engaged, it's often been
the abbreviated format not much liked. My other option being to keep out
of it and write the prose I want to write elsewhere, which appeals more
and more over time - this is probably what you'll (not) see more of.
I am sure that your views on KDE-GNOME, Qt licensing, Ubuntu vs any other
distro, SuSE/RedHat are passionately held and well reasoned, even if not
clearly written down. But this stuff is old hat here, and everyone has come to
their conclusions. Let's move on.
Boo to views. Let's have use. (Not a fan of eye-candy.)
And to pre-empt another hobby-horse of several people here: yes, I'm sending
this from a Windows box. That's what I use at work, for various reasons. I
teach Windows. Unlike most, I also teach Linux. At home I use FC6, having moved
very recently from SUSE. I may move back to openSUSE in the future. But I'll
keep my own counsel on why.
I can see the business opportunity in specialising in SuSE &/or RedHat
too. Good luck with that. My choice came to something different.
Slainte
Gordon
-----------------
Gordon Findlay, Academic IT Manager, Avonmore Tertiary Academy
ph 0 3 9772692
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The cares of tomorrow can wait until this day is done.
[1] A vocal subset of this list want an OSS list, think they have an OSS
list, and treat linux-usersATit.canterbury.ac.nz as an OSS list. They
should wake up to themselves, and go and form an OSS list. - Much less
would be required of honest gnu/linux-users that way.
cheers
--
Rik
