* Little Billy peremptorily fired off this memo:
>> The Linux users are total hypocrites...
>
> No, they're just penniless losers and wackos. They're the sort who vote for
> Lyndon Larouche and think "global warming" and that tidal wave in Indonesia
> were manufactured by big business. Linux is like a cult to them and their
> lives revolve around it.
Linux a cult? You want to see a /real/ Scientology-style cult? Here ya
go:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071023002351958
Evangelism Is War
Our mission is to establish Microsoft's platforms as the de facto
standards throughout the computer industry. Our enemies are the
vendors of platforms that compete with ours: Netscape, Sun, IBM,
Oracle, Lotus, etc. The field of battle is the software industry.
Success is measured in shipping applications. Every line of code that
is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code
that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total
victory, for DRG, is the universal adoption of our standards by
developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for
Microsoft itself: "A computer on every desk and in every home,
running Microsoft software."
Our weapons are psychological, economic, and political -- not
military. No one is forced to adopt our standards at the barrel of a
gun. We can only convince, not compel. Those who adopt our standards
do so as a rational decision to serve their own ends, whatever those
may be. It is our job to ensure that those choosing an operating
system are presented with an overwhelming abundance of evidence and
reasoned argument in favor of our standards -- so overwhelming that
the choice of our standards seems obvious, or (ideally) that the
developer is not even aware that a decision was faced, and a choice
made.
You can read the whole sordid primer, including some emails, yourself,
at the link above. It's not as innocent sounding as the second
paragraph above.
Scientology or Amway? You decide.
> Perhaps because they have no real lives.They're
> like the Jehovah Witnesses of the computer world . Why else would they come
> on unrelated groups where they're not wanted and try to "convert" people to
> Linux?
We don't. It's deranged trolls such as the one you responded to, "Moshe
Goldfarb" (he adopted the name of a Sobibor concentration-camp survivor,
it seems), who deliberately cross-post between Windows/Linux groups to
watch us fight, the way a perverse little kid puts ants and bees in a
jar.
--
There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant
number of users want fixed.
-- Bill Gates, Focus Magazine No. 43 (23 October 1995)
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