Icon-gate
December 19, 2005I have commited a serious crime. I have done something so horrible, so unforgivable, I have no words for it. It is… Unbelievable. They should put me away forever, I should never be allowed to see the light of day again or eat anything else than dry bread and dead water. Really.
You won’t believe what you’re about to hear. I’ll… I’ll just tell you: I used the new FreeBSD logo atop a DragonFly BSD story.
Yes. Can you believe it? Can you now believe I’m planning my own crucifiction? I really didn’t know what came over me the moment I chose to put a story about a FreeBSD fork in our “FreeBSD and other BSDs” category. Really, what was I thinking? Me and Eugenia had to create a whole new category just to fix this.
—
Seriously now, if you ever wanted proof that the software and computing world is fcuked up beyond recognition, this is it. I even got emails from a FreeBSD teammember! Can you believe it?
No fcuking wonder no one takes the free software world seriously. First Linus, now this. Well, I’m off picking up my completely proprietary and utterly non-free 20″ iMac G5 with a 2.1Ghz G5 processor. I am going to indulge myself in the non-free software world. And fcuk, how I like it.
Wow, I am the original poster of the comment on using FreeBSD logo for not FreeBSD category. And well, I am just astonished, that this small remark maed so much noise. I just wanted to clarify thing, really. I thought you accidentally put it into a wrong category, since I seemed to remember NetBSD, Dragonfly logos as well on Osnews.
It is no big deal to me, really. I was very suprised to see it mentioned in your blog, since I did not care at all - not even to follow the comments on Osnews. And I take no offend for placing FreeBSD logo on Dragonfly note, but logically it does not make sense. If that was a whole BSD category, then you should just keep daemon in place there.
It does not make sense to use a logo - which is something designed to differentiate oneself - in a more common sense. Would you put IBM or Dell or Compaq logo for the whole PC category? Apple’s logo for BeOS? It would not make sense. You don’t put bread into a busket labeled “Cakes”, right?
And well, I don’t think it has anything to do with Free Software.
Comment by Piotr Smyrak — December 19, 2005 @ 7:26 pm
I saw that icon and thought “uh oh”
Comment by Chris — December 19, 2005 @ 8:11 pm
My personal problem with the whole thing is that we did the change as requested (created a new topic for Generic-BSDs), and we (me and Thom) STILL got hammered via email by one of the FreeBSD’s maintainers! He kept saying how we were “attacking him” even after we tried to explained to him what is what and why is why and after making the requested change.
I just don’t get some people. He seemed a nice chap when I met him months ago in person, but yesterday, it was like he was possessed or something.
Comment by Eugenia — December 19, 2005 @ 9:06 pm
Chris:
Priceless comment :).
Piotr:
I understand where you’re coming from, and I also acknowledged that to the FreeBSD team, but what bothers me is this: the category was clearly named: “FreeBSD and other BSDs”. And it has been like that for 4 years. Only now does the FreeBSD team complain about it. That’s hypocritical.
We chose to use the new FreeBSD logo the day it got announced, to give it a leg-up. We also chose it because FreeBSD accounts for about 95% of the stories in that category. We THOUGHT we did a good thing– and I still think we did.
However, the problem lies deeper. Matthew Dillon and the rest of the FreeBSD guys had some sort of major clash in the past (I need to read up on that, so the following words are from someone who doesn’t know all the meat), and as such, the FreeBSD team did not want the logo above a *DragonFly* story (Dillon is the lead dev of DF)– we have posted a few PC-BSD and DesktopBSD articles using the new FreeBSD logo already– the FreeBSD team *never* complained.
THAT is where my problem lies. It is in the nature of many free software people to argue over pointless *personal* grudges instead of “getting some real fcuking work done” (as I said in an earlier blog post). OpenBSd vs. NetBSD. KDE vs. GNOME.
I always had the utopian view that developers somehow stood above the childish bickring of their users, but apparantly, that is not the case. And that saddens me, because it means that the free software world will NEVER truly grow up.
Comment by Administrator — December 19, 2005 @ 9:12 pm
IMO, it’s simply unfair to ‘free software people’ as you call them. They don’t seem more stubborn and egocentric, as a category, than let’s say good craftsmen or researchers or artists or medics. Ppl so dedicated and specialized usually have an attitude, or at least the good one in what they do, really have an attitude :) It’s all about investments in what you’re doing, and many of these ppl are not doing it for money. And when you do it for less tangible gains, the water gets bloody with injured egos.
I’m pretty sure that while the lower drones work meekly and with much less passion, good coders and architects and designers inside MS or Apple bicker and fight and get passionate too, and would very much get much less focused if they werent constrained by a hierarchy.
Hackers of free software projects are simply more exposed: more or less every unfortunate comment, every petty rant, every stubbon remark is out there for everyone in the loop to read it. But I am still grateful for what they manage to accomplish in their less ordered, more individualistic way. I don’t really hope for them to shut up and march at the beat of a single drum, for there are too many doing so yet.
Comment by Kitty — December 19, 2005 @ 10:16 pm
I get your point Kitty– it’s not the argueing *in itself* that bothers me– it’s *how* they argue.
Comment by Administrator — December 19, 2005 @ 10:20 pm
Heh. When Linus spoke his mind on KDE vs. GNOME I thought to myself “I want nothing to do with this” and wandered off and did something else.
I’m even more mystified that an *icon* would cause the ruckus it did. People are strange…
As far as the FreeBSD developers vs. Matt Dillon thing goes, forget about it. Whatever war there was has long been deleted from the archives.
Comment by Trent Townsend — December 20, 2005 @ 2:57 am