warspeak

warspeak

Posted May 23, 2003 14:44 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216)
In reply to: warspeak by zonker
Parent article: The Open Group on UNIX trademark

zonker wrote: "I would agree that people should try to curb this tendency, but not for the same reasons -- framing everything as a battle (for example Linux vs. Microsoft, Sun vs. IBM, Java vs. C#, vi vs. Emacs, and so on) tends to encourage a zero sum mentality -- that only one technology can exist at a time or that there has to be a "winner" and a "loser" in any area where there are two or more similar technologies or companies rather than multiple winners, which is a more realistic scenario."

Hear, hear. I also believe that inasmuch as the free software community adopts the war mindset, we are playing into the hands of those for whom it is a native language. They believe they can only make a living if we lose. They are wrong, but they won't be able to change their minds if we assume an adversarial mindset. We need to be more mature and reasonable than they are (which is not difficult a lot of the time... c.f. Mr. Ballmer's performances on stage...) We have a long-standing tradition of courteous, diplomatic interaction and respect for each other when it comes to development (most of the time at least); now we just need to show that to the outside world and help them to realize that sharing is better than intimidation and extortion.

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