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ESR's Desktop Linux 2008 Deadline

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the might-be-a-couple-years-late dept.

jesboat noted Eric S. Raymond and Rob Landley's essay about what the Linux community must do to achieve dominance entitled "World Domination 201". It says "Idealism about open formats will not solve our multimedia problem in time; in fact, getting stuck on either belief in the technical superiority of open source or free-software purism guarantees we will lose. The remaining problems aren't technical ones, and none of the interesting patents will expire before the end of 2008. We've got to ship something that works now. If we let this be a blocking issue preventing overall Linux adoption during the transition window, we won't have the userbase to demand changes in the laws to untangle the screwed up patent system, or even prevent it from getting worse. It's a chicken and egg problem, demanding a workaround until a permanent solution can be achieved. We can't set the standards until after we take over the world."

7 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. World Domination 201? by Speare · · Score: 2, Funny

    Like a college course? WD201? It's just like ESR to post something so sophomoric as this.

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    [ .sig file not found ]
  2. Pinky & The Brain meets Open Source by mfh · · Score: 2, Funny

    Brain: "Just remember, in order to take over the world -- you have to be brilliant. What better way than turning Open Source into Open-Shut Source? Hmmmm and that's what the OSS could truly end up standing for! (We just won't tell them.)"

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    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
    1. Re:Pinky & The Brain meets Open Source by Digital+Avatar · · Score: 5, Funny

      Linus: Egads, Eric! BRILLIANT! HAHAHAHAHA, Troz!
      ESR: Come, Linus, we must prepare for tomorrow night.
      Linus: What are we going to do tomorrow night?
      ESR: The same thing we do every night, Linus...TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

      NARF.

  3. Re:Swallow Your Pride And Just Clone OS X by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just clone the fucking major OS X desktop APIs and UI elements and LET'S GET ON WITH MORE IMPORTANT THINGS. And then clone the major iApps.

    And who will port the 20-so years of software development that have been made for X, Motif, tk, GTK or Qt? you?

    Sure multiple GUI toolkits are a pain and a waste of resources, but so is throwing away perfectly good software on the ground that the newer OS doesn't support it anymore. Just ask Mac users...

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    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  4. Re:So this is what ESR has been doing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I love the name and title of his blog:

    "Armed and Dangerous
    Sex, software, politics, and firearms. Life's simple pleasures...

    haha. what a twat :)

  5. Re:They miss the biggest point by jalefkowit · · Score: 3, Funny

    Absolutely correct. You can, in fact, download the original version of VisiCalc -- the original spreadsheet program, released for MS-DOS in 1981 -- and run it, unmodified, in Windows XP.

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    Read my blog.

  6. Joke got out of hand... by Bazman · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm sure Linus originally talked about World Domination as a joke. A funny. Everyone laughed. He didn't really mean it. ESR means it. And he has guns.