Don't Be a Sharecropper

An anonymous reader writes "Tim Bray, best known as an XML Heavy, has an entertaining rant about why you should be developing for *n*x, OSS, or (especially) the Web. Because if you're on a proprietary platform, you're a "sharecropper"."

Comments

IAWTP

[josh crawley]

I Agree With This Post.

The best thing for large scale adoption of Free Software is for this and other RMS/ESR sort of religious, philosophical propaganda to be buried where corporate manager types can't find it. The thing that these people don't understand is that, although the average bearded crypto-communist zealot may begrudge Microsoft et al. for being profit minded, other corporations don't.

If the arguments for Free Software revolve around price vs. performance, and how it will increase your corporations profit, then corporate managers are willing to tune in. I can't see this conversation happening in a board meeting: "We should convert all our major systems from Microsoft to Free alternatives because I just read on the Web the other day that 'we're nothing but sharecroppers!'"

Re:PC rears its ugly head

[Fux the Pengiun]

Hey, don't get mad at me, direct your anger against the bigotted author of this article. That's the only way we're going to change anything in this world, my black brother. The simple fact of the matter is, most sharecroppers were black. The author was talking about the "miserable work ethic" and "thieving tendancies" of sharecroppers, particularly black sharecroppers. As a black man, I found this highly, highly offensive, and I think it's absolutely the wrong message to send about open source software. The last thing we need is for the mainstream media to start thinking Linux users are racists. They're already portrayed and socialists, communists, hippies, and Europeans...do we really need to add "racist" to that list? I don't think so.

Re:The Slave Mentality

[Fux the Pengiun]

Wow, did you even read the article? Obviously not. How about this little gem right here?

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs exploit coders while they line their own pockets. They treat coders like n_____s. So, are open source coders going to act like n_____s now? Already we don't think up our own ideas for new software features. We steal like n_____s. We're lazy like n_____s, too. We can't let this continue.

My god, man, the guy's a nazi. I was wondering when he was going to lay into the gays, too. What's the title of his next article? "Only code for Apple if you're a pillow biter?" This is the absolute worst kind of message we can send about open source...that we're some kind of group of Republican extremists or something. I want no part of it.