Open Source Community Has Richard Stallman Put to Sleep
Sad news from the world of open source computing today as Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and principle author of the GNU Public License, was put to sleep.
“It was for his own good, really,” remarked Eric S. Raymond. ”He was getting, well, rabid is the only way to describe it. I mean, some of the things he wanted to put into GPL 3.0 were just strange. I won’t get into specifics, but where would we even find a kangaroo suit in Linus Torvalds’ size?”
Raymond assured us that it was done in the most humane way possible. “We brought him into a nice living room with Charles in Charge on the TV. He loved Charles in Charge…” Raymond paused for a moment, his eyes moist. “Sorry… Anyway, while he was distracted by the antics of the lovable Scott Baio and Nicole Eggert, a technician came in behind him and injected 40,000 lines of pure Windows ME source code into his beard. Richard was gone before the second commercial break.” Tears were running openly down his face at this point. “We’ll miss you, big guy.”
In recent months Stallman’s mental stability has weakened, as evidenced by a recent manifesto calling for a change in the name of most operating systems:
In order to underscore the role that GPL’d software plays in our lives, we need to convey to people the idea that the GNU foundation is at the heart of all good software. To this end we need to use the following names:
- All IBM Products will be called “Prison/DOS”
- FreeBSD will be called “GNU/FreeBSD”
- OpenBSD will be called “GNU/OpenBSD”
- No, SERIOUSLY, call it GNU/Linux! Stop laughing at me! I mean it!
- OSX has been heavily influenced by free software. It should be called GNU.5/OSX.
- Windows will be called “Spawn of Satan”.
…
Truth be told, Linus Torvalds lives in Lake Oswego, just a couple miles from here. I’ve seen him at the farmer’s market and he is just the size of a kangaroo, so that’s a red herring, or maybe a straw man. Or a paper tiger?
Otherwise, they’re dead-on.
On another note, as the sole commenter here, I believe I’m entitled to my own key to the executive washroom.
As soon as we get enough money to have executives, washrooms, or keys, then we’ll talk.
I believe the correct term is a red straw tiger. With feet of clay, $2.95 or $4.50 with feet of clay and spring roll.
Ace:
An Executive Washroom is in the works. And you will get the very first key.
Stay Tuned!
Is the Kangaroo suit a reference to the “filthy gamble” segment of the LugRadio podcast?
http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/#episode33
Hmmmm…How to respond to this question? I can say “yes, you got me” and sound cool to all the lugradio listeners…only to go down in flames when they find out that I’ve never even heard of Lugradio before, much less listened to it… I can say “no” and be really dull… I could say “I wrote this first and they heard it and copied me!” but that would involve research and/or time travel…
“Maybe.”