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Stallman Meets KDE Team for Tea
fishermonger writes "Trying to imoprove relations, the french KDE team invited RMS to tea at Linux Solutions 2003. From the piece: 'He asked whether KDE people were saying "Gnu/Linux" or just "Linux", and Open Source or Free Software. I told him some of us are using KDE/Gnu/Linux which pleased him as an answer.' Many pearls in the article."
I was hoping this article would have a couple pictures of Richard Stallman trying to strangle somebody on the KDE team while being held back by some of his FSF cohorts. I mean, they use kvim and they're developing KDE, which was previously "not free as in freedom".
*sigh* it was still very interesting, but a little disappointing to say the least.
But when speaking of higher level things like development, one can say, "I like GNU OSs more than Microsoft ones for writing perl." without a hitch.
That works fine until somebody says, "Huh? What the hell are you talking about? What new OS?" And your cube-mate interrupts and says, "Hey, listen, you really don't want to get into this with him." And then the first guy says, "Get into what? If there's a new OS, I wanna know about it." And then you start explaining that it's not "new" but "guh-noo," and your cube-mate rolls his eyes and says, "Christ, did you have to get him started?" and puts on his headphones and cranks his iPod up really, really loud. And then, just as the first guy is getting that glassy look in his eyes, right when you're getting to the part about how "guh-noo" has been around longer than Linux, somebody else walks by and overhears you in the midst of this little lecture. As she walks by, she can be overheard muttering, "Oh, poor bastard. Why didn't somebody warn him about that guy?"
Remember: the purpose of language is to communicate. The instant somebody starts telling you to use one word instead of another, you're no longer communicating. You're proselytizing.
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