On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 12:08:19 +0000 Simon Hobson <li...@thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:
> reading this list is like being at an evangelical meeting of some > hardcore cult - and that *IS* very off-putting to a large number of > people. Both clauses of the preceding partial sentence are absolutely true. And it goes without saying that I am a minor priest in this cult. Here's the thing though: If you say in public that you don't use systemd, that's offputting to 1/3 of the Linux population. A very vocal and judgmental 1/3. If you actively participate in any plan to provide an alternative to systemd, you've now offput 2/3 of the Linux population, and are going to get your name constantly dragged through the mud. So the Devuan project has already offput 2/3 of the Linux population. And although I cannot provide any backup for this opinion, it's my opinion that most fans of corporate Linux are in the 2/3 we already offput, and very few real fans of corporate Linux remain in the 1/3 not yet offput. So there are few left in our membership and prospective membership who would be offput by anti-Microsoft assertions. Meanwhile, the fact that we're Linux at all skews us to have long ago blown off the Microsoft fans, and makes it likely that a sizeable portion of us have very anti-Microsoft opinions, especially those who have been in Linux long enough to remember the Halloween Documents, Microsoft's Halloween Code, Microsoft execs Mundie and Allchin's whines to congress to make GPL illegal, and Microsoft's generous license fees paid to Linux patent troll SCO, which enabled SCO to randomly sue Linux users for several more years. Bottom line, we long ago blew off most of those who would have found our, or at least my, way of phrasing things offputting. We all hope there will come a time when Devuan becomes a plurality force in the world of Linux. Such an eventuality is no less probable than was Linux's takeover of everything but the desktop, if that probability were predicted in the 1990's. And if you look at Linux promotion in the 1990's, it was very cultish within, and very offputting to fans of corporate computing or even those who believed technology choice to be a meritocracy. And when Devuan becomes such a plurality, having won the war for the hearts and minds of those having strong believes concerning software choice and modularity, we'll tone down our rhetoric to become more inclusive of meritocracy believers and all but the most hard-core corporatists. But it's too early for that now: Right now our job is to inspire strong beliefs leading to strong development, testing, documentation and advocacy, and an absolute and constitutional rejection of systemd. SteveT Steve Litt January 2016 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting http://www.troubleshooters.com/28 _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
