Re: Working with standards (was Re: Oops, forgot...)

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 08:44:45PM -0700, Erik Steffl wrote:
> Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 03:28:42PM -0700, Ben Hartshorne wrote:
> > > And he does have a point.  The anti-M$ sentiment has led to a number of
> > > comments on this list that, were I thinking of transitioning to Linux,
> > > would deter me from doing so because self-righteousness is rarely very
> > > friendly.
> > 
> > I couldn't agree more. Despite not having used a Microsoft product in
> > any seriousness in years, the whole rabidly anti-Microsoft attitude
> > really bugs me sometimes, and I shudder to think how it must look to
> 
>   perhaps you're forget what's it really like. I dare you to try some
> and check your attitude:-))

I do still encounter Microsoft products briefly from time to time, and
personally I don't like them at all and feel a sense of relief when I
can stop and use something else instead. All I'm saying is that I think
the knee-jerk reactions are profoundly unproductive and foster in
outsiders an unpleasant image of what I actually consider to be a very
friendly community. Often the jokes get way out of hand - see almost any
Slashdot flamewar, for example.

Look at a lot of Linux (etc.) developers and you'll find they're quite
professional about it; Linus said recently that he didn't much care
about the relative merits of Linux and Windows, but that he just wants
to make Linux even better than it is now. The best developers look at
other systems and work out what they can learn from them, not where they
can score the most points in a flamewar. For the most part, if they *do*
resort to bashing Microsoft, it's with a certain amount of thought and
evidence. At least that produces a useful discussion rather than a
mud-slinging exercise.

For the most part, the people who spend their time denigrating their
competitors, smilies or not, aren't the people who really do the work.

Sorry if this sounds like humourless preaching; it's just one of the
things that bugs me on a regular basis, so I stopped finding it funny a
while back.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]