Linux move to FreeBSD (Beastie vs Penguin)

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Danny Pansters
>Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 6:42 PM
>To: m.hauber at mchsi.com
>Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>Subject: Re: Linux move to FreeBSD (Beastie vs Penguin)
>
>
>On Wednesday 6 July 2005 03:06, Mike Hauber wrote:
>> On Tuesday 05 July 2005 08:29 pm, you wrote:
>> > It's the imposing upon from religious groups (and well, let's
>> > say that I don't think they're muslims) that I find not only
>> > annoying but, yeah, downright dangerous. Throwing out 2-3
>> > centuries of enlightenment and scientific advance is not a good
>> > idea.
>> >
>> > Greets,
>> >
>> > Dan
>>
>> Come on, now...  Just because someone is a Christian, it doesn't
>> mean he/she's a quack.  _Every_ religion has their extremists.  I
>> don't think it's very cool to knock whole societies of faith
>> (regardless of what faith it is) based on the whims of the few
>> who are too narrow-minded to see past their glasses...
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mike
>
>I agree. They can think whatever they want. That's fine with
>me. But like I
>said, they have no right to impose their belives upon others
>and certainly
>not upon a group of people who provide something technical
>(like an OS) for
>free. They have no right to do that, they have every right to
>think what they
>want to think. So have I. Religion should be merely a private
>matter. And if
>so I have the highest respect for someone doing or not doing or
>undoing or
>redoing something out of religious belief.
>
>And yes, most religious people (muslim, jew, christian, both
>catholic or
>reformed) *are* much more moderate than their leadership. So,
>when are they
>going to stand up? It's their movement, not mine. It's their sense of
>justice, not mine. Are they so diverted that they've lost beforehand?
>

Every political movement operates the same way (and if you don't
think organized religion isn't political your crazy) it is a function
of the movement.

The extremists are the ones who are willing to put the money and
effort into taking an idea all the way.

Even Open Source.  From the commercial software developers point
of view Open Source was an extremist movement - this wasn't helped
by the writings of the like of RMS, by the way.  And there's no
denying that the existence of Linux and FreeBSD and the host of
open source applications has put many one-horse software development
houses into bankruptcy.

As a result of the extremists, today it's considered a moderate position
for a commercial software development house to make it's source code
available, under NDA, to it's customers.  20 years ago that would have
been an extremist position.  So you can see that ultimately the
extremists
have an affect on the movements they lead.



>As long as they don't I reckon they agree with their extreme
>leadership. And
>they surely insult and condemn me (a secular gay gay who has
>been in a 10
>year happy and monogam relationship with one person so far
>thank you how many
>rednecks can say that? -- not implying you are one). So I find a little
>offensive here certainly not unappropriate. It's probably needed. The
>American Taliban is not all that far away. In fact they're
>quite powerful,
>more than the "moderates" seem to think.
>

30 years ago you didn't see people talking about being gay in
normal conversation.  Today you do.  Sure there are the right-wing
extremists who hate gays.  But the moderate center has moved away
from them and toward the extremist gays who were shoving their gayness
in your face all the time.  The extremist anti-gays know this and
are hoping to move the center back to them.  But I don't see any
evidence this is occuring, and plenty of evidence that it's going
in the opposite direction.

Take the gay marriage thing.  The entire gay marriage campaign wasn't
about actually getting gay marriage laws on the books.  It was about
getting secular domestic arraingement laws on the books so that gays
in long term relationships wern't shut out of things like being able
to have power of attourney and such if their partner got sick and
unable to care for him or her self.  They tried for years to get moderate
versions of those laws on the books and failed.  So they then tried
the extreme version - gay marriage - and while that got shot down,
the existence of those campaigns had the effect of moving the center
to make the domestic arraingement laws now acceptable.  That is why
they are passing now.

30 years from now they will probably try for bestiality marriage
laws to get gay marriage laws passed.  It's the way of things.

Ted