After you tip your hand... [LWN.net]

After you tip your hand...

Posted Nov 20, 2003 22:19 UTC (Thu) by argent (guest, #17054)
In reply to: After you tip your hand... by nd
Parent article: Thomas Bushnell is no longer Hurd maintainer

"Why pollute GNU/Linux with proprietary trash?"

Until you're running it on an open source processor built in garage FABs with open source VHDL tools and open source BIOS and... well, until Vernor Vinge's "Ungoverned" future history comes to pass, it's proprietary trash you're running Linux (with or without a GNU userland) on, and it's proprietary trash that's driving the demand that makes fast bitty boxes so cheap that you can afford the luxury of contempt for it.

Right now...

Right now I'm feeling I've stepped into the middle of Eric Flint's "Belisarius" saga, with Richard Stallman playing the part of Link and/or Great Lady Holi, while the mongrel Romans with their impure blood nibble them to death...

After all... right now the most popular even /partly/ open-source desktop operating system is running on that horrible proprietary hardware that Stallman used to bitterly complain about, with a proprietary GUI and API on top... and it's the proprietary GUI and API and the proprietary apps that run on it that sell Mac OS X to most people, not the fact that Darwin is BSD at the core...

Mongrel! Impure! Unclean! Oh the horror! Oh the embarassment! All die...

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After you tip your hand...

Posted Nov 21, 2003 0:05 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

> Until you're running it on an open source processor

This is the "If I can't be perfect, I won't even try" argument. It's a great excuse to do nothing, for people that are looking for such an excuse.

> ...

(I can't find a point in the rest of your comment)