Re: OSDL hires open source evangelist

[The Ghost In The Machine]

In comp.os.linux.advocacy, kier
<vallon@tiscali.co.uk>
 wrote
on Wed, 09 Jun 2004 11:11:12 +0100
<40c6e31c$0$17786$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com>:
> Swampee wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 08 Jun 2004 22:59:28 +0100, Daeron wrote:
>> 
>>> OSDL hires open source 'evangelist'
>>> anon June 08 2004
>>> 
>>> The Beaverton-based Open Source Development Labs, a global consortium
>>> dedicated to accelerating the adoption of the operating system Linux,
>>> Tuesday hired a former executive of MontaVista Software as an open
>>> source "evangelist."
>>> 
>>> William Weinberg has taken the newly created position as open source
>>> architecture specialist. In this role, Weinberg will work with lab
>>> members, Linux users, press and analysts as an evangelist for Linux and
>>> OSDL programs ...
>>> 
>> 
>> IOW Linux now sees the need for a spin doctor.
>> 
>> Personally I think Linux, and it's users, need a good HEAD Doctor.
>
> Nobody cares what you 'think'

I care, if it's good thought.  Linux has problems.
(So does FreeBSD.  So does Windows.  So does Solaris.
So did my third-grade math teacher. :-) )  I don't know
if anyone wants to solve them or not, as the problems can
range from the absurdly minor ("I want to be able to do
'ntpq peers' instead of 'ntpq -c peers'") to the annoying
but workable (cube doesn't like ATI; nobody else likes
DRI on my ATI9000 GL-capable card) to the intractable
(Optiplexes look like they should be able to do DRI GL
even with only 4 MB, but they can't for some reason)
to the ridiculous (No, I don't want to run MS Office!).

One problem I have with OSS in general: sometimes it's
hard to find The Right Stuff.  The naming is less than
obvious in some cases:  "Konqueror" a web browser?
Wait...I thought it was a military-style training game!
And "Galeon" as a web browser sails nicely enough, but
the name looks like it snarls the rigging.  "Mozilla"
is a good browser but sounds like it wants to stomp all
over you, as opposed to presenting pretty pictures, text,
or both.  "Firefox" looks very hot, but is it a browser or
something one wants to catch with hounds and horses (and
maybe a fire extinguisher -- or even an F16!)?  Does Opera
do opera?  (Probably, with a RealAudio plugin.) Will Dillo
dilly-dally daily?  (Probably not, as it's small, fast,
and fairly stupid.)  Is Lynx something to use or something
I should worry about prowling around my back yard, looking
for infants to eat?  What does "Amaya" really mean in French?

Wow...I just had an "Epiphany"! :-)  I think...

And then there's "Apache", "JBoss", "Java", and "Python".
Put all these together and one might get a vision of a
stereotypical Native American in full eagle headdress
sipping a cup of coffee and fighting off (or carrying)
a slithering reptile....when in fact one's merely
talking about an interesting heterogeneous webserver
implementation. :-)

Fortunately, a good search engine might resolve most of these
issues, and "The Web Browser" would be a boring, if
logical, counterpoint to Internet Explorer.  So this isn't
all that serious a complaint -- and Windows is not immune
to odd names; "Eudora", "Chicago"/"Cairo", "Whistler",
"Longhorn", and "Sidewinder" come immediately to mind.

(And then there's "BOB"....yuck.)

ObSpellingLame: "its", construct problems relating to clause inclusion
                (singular/plural mismatch), "doctor".  Someone needs
                to doctor their text slightly... :-)

-- 
#191, ewill3@earthlink.net
It's still legal to go .sigless.