Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| Jargon Coiner (#7) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * O'REILLY O'WRITING: Going to a bookstore and copying down notes from an O'Reilly computer book that you can't afford. * DEEP WRITE MODE: Similar to "deep hack mode", but applies to people writing editorials or (very rarely) Slashdot comments. The author of this fortune file sometimes experiences "deep humor mode". * EDITORIAL WAR: Skirmishes between two or more parties carried out via strongly-worded editorials published to sites like Slashdot, Linux Today, etc. ESR and RMS are frequently engaged in this. * THREENYM: Referring to someone by the first letter of their three names. Used by some people (RMS and ESR), but not others (has anybody ever tried to refer to Linus Torvalds as "LBT"?). | |
| ERIC S. RAYMOND: I'd like to introduce Eric Jones, a disadvantaged member of the geek community who has been forced to live in a homeless shelter. Eric? Come on out here and tell us about yourself... JONES: Well, I'm a consultant for a Bay Area corporation. Due to the housing crisis, I've been forced to sleep in a shelter. ESR: How much do you make? JONES: Over $100,000 a year. ESR: Wow! And you still can't afford housing or rent? That sounds terrible... Hopefully with this telethon we'll be able to raise money to fund new shelters for disadvantaged geeks like Eric here. We also have plans for a Silicon Valley Terraforming Initiative in which several square miles of Pacific Ocean will be turned into usuable land for building housing and apartments for geeks... -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon | |
| New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#3) In the "Cathedral and the Bazaar", ESR mentions that one motivation behind Open Source software is ego-gratification. That's where OpenEgo, Inc. comes in. For a fee, the hackers at OpenEgo will produce a piece of Open Source software and distribute it in your name, thus building up your reputation and ego. You can quickly become the envy of all your friends -- without lifting a finger. Want a higher-paying tech job? With OpenEgo's services, you'll look like an Open Source pro in no time, and have dozens of hot job offers from across the country. Says the OpenEgo sales literature, "Designing, implementing, maintaining, and promoting a successful Open Source project is a pain. However, at OpenEgo, we do all the work while you reap all the rewards..." A page on the OpenEgo site claims, "We produced a Linux kernel patch for one customer last year that was immediately accepted by Linus Torvalds... Within days the person gained employment at Transmeta and is now on the road to IPO riches..." Prices range from $1,000 for a small program to $5,000 for a kernel patch. | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#21) The GNU Project Meet Richard M. Stallman, an MIT hacker who would found the GNU Project and create Emacs, the operating-system-disguised-as-a-text-editor. RMS, the first member of the Three Initials Club (joined by ESR and JWZ), experienced such frustration with software wrapped in arcane license agreements that he embarked on the GNU Project to produce free software. His journey began when he noticed this fine print for a printer driver: You do not own this software. You own a license to use one copy of this software, a license that we can revoke at any time for any reason whatsoever without a refund. You may not copy, distribute, alter, disassemble, or hack the software. The source code is locked away in a vault in Cleveland. If you say anything negative about this software you will be in violation of this license and required to forfeit your soul and/or first born child to us. The harsh wording of the license shocked RMS. The computer industry was in it's infancy, which could only mean it was going to get much, much worse. | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#28) Free, Open, Libre, Whatever Software Eric S. Raymond's now famous paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", set the stage for the lucrative business of giving software away. In CatB, ESR likened the software industry to an anarchistic bazaar, with each vendor looking out for himself, trying to hoodwink customers and fellow vendors. The produce vendor (i.e. Apple), for instance, felt no need to cooperate with the crystal-ball seller (Oracle) or the con artist hocking miracle drugs (Microsoft). Each kept their property and trade secrets to themselves, hoping to gain an edge and make money fast. "With enough eyeballs, all bug-ridden software programs are marketable," ESR observed. ESR contrasted the "caveat emptor" Bazaar to an idealistic Cathedral model used by free software developers. European cathedrals of medieval days were built block-by-block with extensive volunteer manpower from the surrounding community. Such projects were "open" in the sense that everybody could see their progress, and interested people could wander inside and offer comments or praise about construction methods. "Those medieval cathedrals are still standing," ESR mused. "But bazaars built in the 14th Century are long gone, a victim of their inferior nature." | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#29) "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is credited by many (especially ESR himself) as the reason Netscape announced January 22, 1998 the release of the Mozilla source code. In addition, Rob Malda of Slashdot has also received praise because he had recently published an editorial ("Give us the damn source code so we can fix Netscape's problems ourselves!") Of course, historians now know the true reason behind the landmark decision: Netscape engineers were scared to death that a large multi-national corporation would acquire them and crush Mozilla. Which indeed did happen much later, although everybody thought the conqueror would be Microsoft, not AOL (America's Online Lusers). The Netscape announcement prompted a strategy session among Linux bigwigs on February 3rd. They decided a new term to replace 'free software' was needed; some rejected suggestions included "Free Source", "Ajar Source", "World Domination Source", "bong-ware" (Bong's Obviously Not GNU), and "Nude Source". We can thank Chris Peterson for coining "Open Source", which became the adopted term and later sparked the ugly "Free Software vs. Open Source", "Raymond vs. Stallman" flame-a-thons. | |
| <Kensey> RMS for President??? <RelDrgn> ...or ESR, he wants a new job ;) | |
