[Last Update 2001.01.16] Matthew Wronka <matt.wronka@altavista.net>

Background and Disclaimer: This rant will use examples from Real Life and fiction in order to convey its point. These examples are merely for illustrative purposes and should not be seen as personal nor as non-personal attacks on anybody involved. The author has great respect for some people/sites used, and many others he knows nothing of. I have taken every effort to verify the accuracy of this piece. Any comments, suggestions, corrections, or flames can be sent to my email address.

Blind Evangelists

(aka Because its 13373, or The Story of Open Source)

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
-Nietzsche (Human, All-Too-Human)

"Don't you remember the lecture [on open-source] last semester?" concluded Teddy from the movie Antitrust following a long list of reasons intended to dissuade his friend Milo from working for NURV (a fictious company modeled after Microsoft Corp.) By this point in the movie, I had already lost a great deal of respect for Teddy.

Teddy was the stereotypical open-source evangilist. He preached and pontificated. It seemed at times that the whole of his energy was devoted to "spreading the word." No problem. But what was he saying? What are a large majority of these evangelists saying? What are they doing?

The greatest complaints about Linux is probably no longer that it's user unfriendly, that there is a lack of software for it (notable ports include Oracle, WordPerfect, and UnrealTournament among others, and original software), or even that there is no unified environment (GNOME and KDE are working on greater interoperability). The complaint that I now come acorss the most today has nothing to do at all with the operating system--it has to do with the community, the people evangilizing and/or using it. And often these people complaining are doing the same things as those they are complaining about.

Top | Home