World's best-dressed Linux backer leaves Sun (Register) [LWN.net]

World's best-dressed Linux backer leaves Sun (Register)

Posted Jul 17, 2004 5:39 UTC (Sat) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link]

Describing an individual by his clothing, or other physical characteristics, is shallow, and only vaguely tangential to the meat of the story.

Open Source Software is about freedom, one aspect of which is freedom from the economic yoke of Microsoft and other proprietary software. Freedom from the tyranny of fashion is another part of our struggle as individuals striving to be responsible in a world which is all too expensive, and all to ready to put/keep us economically between the proverbial "rock and a hard place".

I'm not interested in knowing who is the "best-dressed member of the Linux community"; I'm sure that others feel the same way. Designer suits, ties, matching shoes, and other accessories are way off the Richter-scale of personal economics for most of us; I daresay that their off-the-rack cousins are not much better. "Dressing for success" is an inappropriate yardstick for measuring one's success in the workplace, especially in an era where even McDonald's makes its employees pay for their own uniforms.

Levi's blue jeans or Levi's Dockers... it's all the same: casual, comfortable clothing -- and without the bills for drycleaning. Leave the "best-dressed" stuff for GQ or People, and try to maintain a higher standard of ideological purity/awareness.

::climbing down off my soapbox::

As an aside, I just relocated and was forced to wait more than two weeks for xDSL connectivity. During that time, I found myself using a computer at the local public library to check my email and perform other chores, but faced with a once-a-day time limit of one hour. Better to "invest" money to increase these kind of computing resources, than on upgrading one's wardrobe...

World's best-dressed Linux backer comments

Posted Jul 17, 2004 8:51 UTC (Sat) by stuart (subscriber, #623) [Link]

That's just part of El Reg's 'humour' style, they don't mean anything by it but they like to poke fun equally at all parties in the technology world. So, no soapboxes required here :-)

Stu.

World's best-dressed Linux backer leaves Sun (Register)

Posted Jul 17, 2004 13:58 UTC (Sat) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]

Clothes make the man, eeh, geek. To me, it is of *utmost* importance to know exactly who the best dressed member of the Linux community is. How would you not want to know this? it is key information: your dress sense say much about you and especially about your technical capabilities.

I am not interested in ideological purity/awareness, and I am sure that others feel the same way - the whole ideology discussion has no place here anyway: higher standard? of what? maybe our ideologies are different. Maybe my ideology has everything to do with making as much money as possible, in the shortest possible timeframe. At the expense of others, of course. while wearing designer clothes, with matching shoes. Attaining a higher standard in that particular ideology is likey to send you flipping out 7 ways to venus. So the whole ideology discussion is only useful if we all were to share the same ideology - and I can assure you we don't. ESR, for example, *loves* guns, and will fight for his right to keep guns. I abhor guns and everything they represent. Doesn't mean that I am not interested his opinions on Open Source Software - or his work as a hacker, for that matter.

So let's *not* start bitching about what articles should or should not be posted - it is easy to slag off everything that comes around. Let's instead discuss the artcile itself (which says very, very little about clothes - i'm guessing you did not even read it....) and let's focus on what the register has to say about the guy.l

World's best-dressed Linux backer leaves Sun (Register)

Posted Jul 19, 2004 15:42 UTC (Mon) by irios (guest, #19838) [Link]

What is *really* shallow is believing that using products by Levi's, or by any other multinational brand, makes you a better person.

Why don't you try to think of things without sticking commercial tags? It sure must be difficult, but it might still prove possible. Yes, let's not 'go to Starbucks', but rather 'go have a coffee'. Don't "always wear Levi's"; if uncapable of anything else (though there are indeed other possibilities, and far cheaper than Levi's, too), at least "always wear jeans".

Hey, let's pretend that globally branded multinationals have not sucked our last available neuron without we even noticing.

World's best-dressed Linux backer leaves Sun (Register)

Posted Jul 22, 2004 12:03 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Thank you for this post.

I hope that the grandpa poster will see its own hypocrysis [sp?]
now.

Joachim