Quote: Original post by Oluseyi

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Being a vegan, I'll answer that yes, offering me free meat while knowing that I'm a vegan gives me the right to flame you, because I'm human and thus emotional, and it gets horribly old after a few such offers. Maybe will you do that out of good will, but I don't think it's so hard to understand that I can eventually grow tired of having my beliefs stomped over and over again.

Hmm, that's an interesting extrapolation. You consider being offered meat "having your beliefs stomped on," which is inference as to the intent of the other individual. I suppose the problem is that "vegan" is indistinguishable from "vegetarian" for most people, so to them it's not a matter of beliefs/convictions/religion, but simply one of dietary need/choice.

I didn't actually think about that. :-) I was assuming a situation where the "giver" would know the ins and outs of being a vegan but would still offer the vegan some meat "just in case he'd like some". While I can see why that'd be the nice thing to do, for a lot of vegans it's a tad insulting or outright rude and amounts to provocation. It's sort of asking us if we'd like to forget our faith for a moment. Of course and as you mentioned, some vegans are so because of dietary need/choice, and I expect them to be more tolerant to such offers.

I guess the same can be said about free software advocates, though probably to a lesser degree, software being much less fundamental than food.

Thanks for the eye opener though. With time, I got so defensive over this that I didn't even consider that someone could offer me to eat meat out of good will.

Quote:
Similarly, for most people Linux is a matter of choice (Open Source attempts to make a rational/pragmatic case for Linux and other such software, in opposition to Free Software, which makes an ideological one).

Understood. I'm certainly not trying to evangelize anyone here. I'm merely stating that maybe those guys got defensive with time. I personally adhere to the ideological side, considering the potential technical benefit as a nice side effect. YMMV.

Quote:
By the way, if I offered someone meat and they started to flame me, I'd slap them with it. It's an offer; the civilized thing to do is to decline. Now, if I were to persist/insist/get belligerent, then he'd be within his rights to slap me with... a brussel sprout? [smile]

That's why I said that it gets old after a while. I agree that it's rude and that you don't deserve it (unless you're doing it on purpose), but we all have a breaking point. Declining 10 times a week quickly erodes patience.

As for the violence, we tend to prefer verbal assaults because we're skinny and physically weak. ;-)

Anyway, I'm done with the vegan stuff as it's quite off-topic. Sorry about that.


Yann L: to make sure that I wasn't misunderstood, let me say that I hope you'll find testers for your projects or at the very least people with more social skills than the authors of the replies to your offer. :-)


Hope this helps.

I'll also join the ranks of those wanting to test it, i was planning on porting my OGLWFW project to Linux/X-windows soon and having a decent IDE to work with while I work out the kinks would be fantasic.. infact, it couldnt have come at a better time really [grin]

Quote: Original post by CoffeeMug
Linux started out as a hobbyish school project. At the time it was no different than thousands of other hobby OS projects students wrote in their spare time for fun. Linus' project picked up out of sheer luck. He is a good programmer, just like thousands of others. He is an ok architect: there are no brilliant architectural solutions in linux kernel. He is a crappy visionary: he cannot see one inch farther than the next stable release of his kernel and every reasonable person knows that an OS is far more than just a kernel.

He'd probably be the first to agree with you on the visionary part, and while he might agree on the luck part, I don't. Linus was a very effective writer and persuader, luck had nothing to do with it.

He's also a brilliant leader. There's a reason that flamewars on l-k are solved often enough by "Linus, what do you think?" and that reason is NOT "he's the one who started the project."

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Quote: Original post by seanw
KDE and Gnome look very nice and their GUIs act just like you'd expect.

To mainstream users linux gui feels like shit. Mainstream users are the ones that matter.

The nicest way I can say this is: You're full of shit.

Quote:

Quote: Original post by seanw
Just because Linux doesn't have a Microsoft style entity which pushes for everyone to use the same APIs doesn't mean there are no "coherent API standards".

Which is why linux gui barely manages to provide copy/paste support (doesn't always work accross toolkits) and can't even begin to dream about universal drag and drop.

Cut and paste always works. And I think I've yelled at you about spewing junk like this before.

i like linux but i am completely understanding of those who dont want to release the source code, i do have the creavet of liking the autotools they perform a very needed task, their are not alot of good ways to make a program compile on every unix/linux distro, windows, and misc other odd platforms autotools does this quiet nicely(given i hate M4 and beleave autotools could use a serious modernisation upgrade it to xml perhaps?). simplely complaining that someone is using some "exotic" distro or os is no excuse, i have found that damn near every linux distro is "exotic" in some way or another. of corse considering that you are giving out binary's for free no one should be bitching. also GTK+) does not lock you into the linux desktop(thank god x11 and friends suck) you can downloads the GTK+ library for windows mac sunos etc, it is the gnome extension's for GTK+ that are to be avoided. as for QT why is this even listed QT is gpl any source using qt would by extension also have to be gpl(directed to suggester of its use not original poster).
as to emacs, xemacs etc to the people with 3 arms and 4 hands and telepathy to use these programs all the more power to them. =p

feel free to let me beta test it if you like rd.hunt@gmail.com

Quote: Original post by C-Junkie
Linus was a very effective writer and persuader, luck had nothing to do with it.

Luck has everything to do with it as no venture ever succeeds without a share of it. Anyway, this is more of a personal philosophy question and nothing to argue about.

Quote: Original post by C-Junkie
He's also a brilliant leader. There's a reason that flamewars on l-k are solved often enough by "Linus, what do you think?" and that reason is NOT "he's the one who started the project."

If the flamewars occur due to conflicting engineering solutions a logically and progmatically superior solution should be picked. In this case what Linus thinks is entirely irrelevant, what is relevant is his ability to select a proper solution. Leadership has nothing to do with it, skill does. Now, if the flamewars occur on purely subjective topics, your example merely points out the inability of Linus' followers to make up their own mind.

Quote: Original post by C-Junkie
The nicest way I can say this is: You're full of shit.

I'm pretty sure that vast majority of the people on this board that tried linux would agree with me on this point. Linux gui is nowhere near the quality of mac and windows. Why insult me for stating the obvious?

Quote: Original post by C-Junkie
Cut and paste always works.

Oh really? Just yesterday I was trying to copy the name of a boost library file from a gnome file browser and paste it into MinGW Studio edit box that specifies which libraries to link to. Didn't work for me. You're free to try it if you wish but "always" is certainly not the right word here.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Anyway, I'm done with the vegan stuff as it's quite off-topic. Sorry about that.

Actually, that turned out to be a very useful analogy in helping us both (and probably others as well) understand the issue, so no apology needed.

Quote: Original post by CoffeeMug
If the flamewars occur due to conflicting engineering solutions a logically and progmatically superior solution should be picked. In this case what Linus thinks is entirely irrelevant, what is relevant is his ability to select a proper solution. Leadership has nothing to do with it, skill does.

Ah, but you're discounting the impact of ego in a gift culture where your entire status is determined by exactly such contributions (and attendant recognition). Part of what Linus does is ration out such accolades and placate the competitors, which is great leadership (of a rabble of barbarians, admittedly, but... [smile])

Quote: Original post by CoffeeMug

Quote: Original post by C-Junkie
The nicest way I can say this is: You're full of shit.

I'm pretty sure that vast majority of the people on this board that tried linux would agree with me on this point. Linux gui is nowhere near the quality of mac and windows. Why insult me for stating the obvious?

I have to agree with CoffeeMug on this, I've used linux on and off (well, more off than on) since around 1998 and the thing which has always turned me off about it was the way the GUI reacted. Dont get me wrong, the more recent version of Gnome was much nicer but the fact that MS have spent a LOT of money working on the UI still shows and gives it its edge. Its annoying that I cant put my finger on just what it is but there is something 'off' about linux GUIs *shrugs*

Quote: Original post by Oluseyi
Part of what Linus does is ration out such accolades and placate the competitors, which is great leadership (of a rabble of barbarians, admittedly, but... [smile])

I suppose different people define leadership differently [smile] What Linus needs to do is recognize that an OS is more than just the kernel. He needs to shift from open source to open design and initiate public discussions of API standards where they're needed. Linux GUI API 1.0, Linux Clipboard API 1.0, etc. Different implementors would then conform to these APIs which would allow for perfect interoperation and ease of development. People could then introduce extensions and popular/necessary ones would be incorporated into official API standards after review and redesign. This is what Linux needs. This would be leadership. What Linus is doing now is essentially worthless as good kernels are a dime a dozen (all the linux variants, all the bsds, darwin, etc.) Success of Linux has nothing to do with Linus for a long time already. It's mostly hype, all the various software that makes up an OS that's portable to other unix variants and that Linus has nothing to do with, and hard work of distribution maintainers.

Quote: Original post by CoffeeMug
I suppose different people define leadership differently

I think you do not know what leadership is.

Quote: What Linus needs to do is recognize that an OS is more than just the kernel.

Linus doesn't need to do anything. He's a kernel developer. He deals with kernels.

Quote: He needs to shift from open source to open design and initiate public discussions of API standards where they're needed. Linux GUI API 1.0, Linux Clipboard API 1.0, etc.

Which would all be different competitors to the existing solutions, further compounding the problems. (see: RSS, RSS2, Atom, etc) You have no freaking clue "what needs to be done," so let's not go there.

Quote: This would be leadership.

Oh yes. It would. If anybody AT ALL used them, it would be an astounding display of leadership. Merely creating them is nothing. Hell, they already exist.

Quote: Success of Linux has nothing to do with Linus for a long time already.

You've got that right, he's a kernel developer. Gnome (and freedesktop) is where it's at right now.

And I still say Gnome looks and feels a lot nicer than Windows.

We've seriously derailed this thread.