Verily I say unto thee, that dapunka spake thusly:
> A while ago, I referred to someone (I think [H]omer) as a "zealot",
> and he got really pissed off. I hadn't meant it disparagingly - I was
> just saying he was a FOSS purist - but he reacted like I was a troll,
> baiting him. So I decided not to use the term again. Obviously it
> meant different things to different people.
No I don't think you're a Troll, but yes AFAIAC "zealot" *is* an insult,
much like "bigot" or "fanatic". It certainly is not a term of
endearment, and indeed is typically used by people to stigmatise their
opponents as radicals unworthy of consideration. Marginalising people
because of their beliefs, is far more worthy of the term "zealot" than
those who hold those beliefs.
As for the waterskidoo issue, I gave her the benefit of the doubt for as
long as I could bear, but her relentless dismissal of advocates as
"zealots" continued unabated. It wasn't merely her use of the word, it
was the context, and the continuous implication that to support such
issues as GNU/Linux, Free Software, privacy, civil rights, fair use,
etc., was some form of fanaticism, and that (by implication) none of
these issues were important ... or even real (using terms like
"paranoia" and "tin foil hat"). It was her continuous *denial* of these
issues, and her deeply insulting insinuations, that landed her in the
sin bin, not the mere use of a word.
If it were only negative remarks against Microsoft that she denounced as
fanaticism, then I might be inclined to call her a "Microsoft
Apologist", but as things stand, she seems to be taking a stand against
pretty much everything and anything related to the principles of Free
Software, Freedom, justice, or even just common sense. So I must
conclude that she is either an "Anti-Freedom Apologist" or just plain
argumentative (amusingly, a criticism she first levelled against her
initial antagonists like Hadron). I should have seen the warning signs.
That reminds me of a girl I knew at college, whom I liked, although she
was annoyingly argumentative. She wasn't abrasive with it though, but it
was quite funny to watch her in action, because no matter what someone
said, she'd immediately respond with the phrase "no but...", but then
trail off into a mutter, because she didn't really have a point at all.
Perhaps that is waterskidoo ... a pointless woman.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "Proprietary licenses, the crack cocaine of software finance."
| - Matt Asay, CNET
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Fedora release 7 (Moonshine) on sky, running kernel 2.6.22.1-41.fc7
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