smile politely at foaming mouthed zealots [LWN.net]

smile politely at foaming mouthed zealots

Posted Sep 26, 2006 23:09 UTC (Tue) by mingo (subscriber, #31122)
In reply to: Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process (Linux.com) by smoogen
Parent article: Why Torvalds is sitting out the GPLv3 process (Linux.com)

Well from reading many of the comments that get attached to anyone who disagrees with the GPLv3 you would come to feel that person is a heretic who needs to be taken to a Gulag for some serious Reeducation in good old Stalin/Mao ways.

Since at that point, a rational discourse can not be had because it has become a partisan religous debate.. it is better to just nod your heads, smile politely at the foaming mouthed zealot and run for the door quickly.

Hehe :-) Well said.

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smile politely at foaming mouthed zealots

Posted Sep 27, 2006 0:02 UTC (Wed) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

Indeed. If I thought the Stallmanites could actually get anywhere, they'd scare me a lot more than the Microsofts and IBMs of this world. As it is, though, they are mainly just a vocal nuisance who get the rest of us laughed at more than we would be otherwise.

I think there is probably a good bit of truth to Linus' feeling that much of the discussion is driven by people who talk more than they code. i.e. politically oriented people advocating a license without having much or any code of their own to go under it.

politely feed the name-calling trolls

Posted Sep 27, 2006 10:15 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

> "foaming mouthed zealots"
> "vocal nuisance".

It's ad hominem attacks like these that get "the rest of us" laughed
at -- not the clear-headed discussion of facts and statement of ethical
positions and technical concerns like in most of the other posts.