Good for a laugh

[sunscape]

Article from shashdot:

http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/04/29/221235.shtml?tid=109&tid=1&tid=106

It goes a little like this...

Brad Smith: The king desires peace.

Eric Raymond: Longshanks.. er.. Gates desires peace?

Brad Smith: He declares it to me, I swear it. He proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you file formats, patents, and this chest of gold which I am to pay to you personally.

Eric Raymond: File formats and patents. Gold. That I should become Judas?

Brad Smith: Peace is made in such ways.

Eric Raymond: Slaves are made in such ways. The last time Gates spoke of peace I was a boy. And many open-source nobles, who would not be slaves, were lured by him under a flag of truce to a barn, where he embraced and extended and extinguished them. I was very young, but I remember this Gates notion of peace.

[HungSquirrel]

That was funny, but this one's funnier to me:


In a related headline,
Lucy promises to hold football with finger, Charlie Brown to kick.

[TravisNewman]

HA! Nice analogy

[az]

This is all very nice, but action speaks louder than words. It is not convincing that Microsoft wants to talk about working together with open source. What is there to talk about?

Do they think that the open source community is represented by one or two people who will negotiate and then bring forward changes on behalf of the FLOSS community? On Microsoft's side, if they want to use open source tools and standards, go ahead and use them. They are open. You do not need to ask!

The whole press release is worthless. I wonder how they will follow it up...

[az]

...They will probably anounce next week that Longhorn has incorporated a great number of open source technologies....

[seven]

if you cant beat them join them?
lol, gates is funny
:)

[sonny]

I think it would be nice that MS-Office supports the file format from OO... But I'd be scared if MS cunstruct those "bridges", cuz he might just patent them and that would be something bad if all linux distro's are using they're bridges.

They have to be careful, like sunscape says in the analogy:

The last time Gates spoke of peace I was a boy. And many open-source nobles, who would not be slaves, were lured by him under a flag of truce to a barn, where he embraced and extended and extinguished them.

And then I might twist the truth... I'm just saying to the Open Source Embassadors: Beware of the monster and his lies.

[Lovechild]

Can't stop laughing.... so damn funny...

[poofyhairguy]

self interest is Microsoft's interest, why pretend?

[DoubleDangerClub]

I installed the pre-beta of Longhorn and it was all a smokescreen. It's just a way for microsoft to make people think they don't have it together.
It was soooo bad. Even at prime resolution, everything, seriously, was blurry, fuzzy, icons were all distorted and pixellated. It was nasty. And IE was the same version from XP, with a different skin.

Funny stuff. I expanded my ubuntu space over it after I had a good laugh. :)

DDC

[seven]

I installed the pre-beta of Longhorn and it was all a smokescreen. It's just a way for microsoft to make people think they don't have it together.
It was soooo bad. Even at prime resolution, everything, seriously, was blurry, fuzzy, icons were all distorted and pixellated. It was nasty. And IE was the same version from XP, with a different skin.

Funny stuff. I expanded my ubuntu space over it after I had a good laugh. :)

DDC

I think they want to make things soft and transparent because it is "for home users - computer is for everyone". of course this is ********, you need some security and docs, not lousy slowing graphics :)