ARTICLE - ESR gives up on Fedora

[Steven W. Orr]

On Thursday, Feb 22nd 2007 at 10:51 -0500, quoth Ben Scott:

=>On 2/22/07, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:
=>> I prefer to read the original source from the original target:
=>> www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-February/msg01006.html
=>
=> His complaints seem rather vague and lacking in any kind of goal.
=>More to the point, who cares?  "Linux user switches distributions,
=>film at 11."  Sure, it's ESR.  Whoop-de-freaking-do.  What, is the
=>Linux community so mainstream now that we need to obsess over every
=>move of arbitrary celebrity figures?
=>
=> What next, Pictures of Linus at a bar make the headlines?  Maybe
=>Stallman will shave his head... ;-)
=>
=>-- Ben

All of the celeb woopdedoo aside...

The boy really has a point. First of all, esr really is owed a huge debt 
by the community. He was the creator of open source. Before that all we 
had was free software. Politics and semantics aside, the community has 
grown tremendously because of this carefully executed campaign.

Next, besides the fact that he's right, he has a good track record. Last 
time he bitched in this manner was over how crappy an interface cups has. 
The point is that the software may be good stuff from some level of 
functionality, but if people don't have a chance at being able to 
configure it and run it then what's the point.

I happen to be an rpm over deb person the same way I prefer scotch over 
bourbon. The two may be functionally equivalent, but either way, rpm is 
guilty of stagnation. That combined with a bunch of other factors 
contributes to myself, and lots of others, thinking (for a long time now) 
about switching to Ubuntu.

Change happens because people make it happen. Your options are not 
always limited to "contribute code or shut up about it". Action like ESR's 
is a valid campaign tactic.

-- 
Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have  .0.
happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0
Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000
individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net