Well, I got me a new refurbished box with very good specs, which is about to become my new home office machine. That's as soon as Slackware 13.0 hits final distribution release, which should be any day now... (Bought the box with Windows on it, you see) So, while I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for that landmark to come to pass, I did what any Linux user probably does when temporarily owning a copy of Windows (XP Pro here), and checked how it's doing these days.

Because, see, I just can't get enough asstroturfers telling me how swell Windows stacks up to Linux lately. Gotta see for myself what all the hype is about. And since Microsoft is now suffering from the delusion that it competes with Linux, well...

It didn't take long before the old Microsoft memories came back. Literally before I could get into the desktop, the first problem hit: It doesn't recognize the mouse. To be sure, the mouse is an old Wacom tablet with the little wireless mouse on it, pressed into service because, well, my other four mice are busy. It plugs into the USB port. But anyway, I've plugged this same mouse into more than six different machines running Linux and it always worked instantly.

So, it's time to use Windows without the mouse. Won't this be fun? Using Windows without the mouse incorporates three methods:

• Using the Super key (the one with the logo).
• Using 'tab' and 'shift-tab' a lot.
• Using 'alt' + letters when you have a program open.

That Super key is a riot. To quote the keyboard reference, "Logo-S: Toggles CAPS LOCK on and off" How handy. I've always said to myself, "Pressing one key to toggle Caps-Lock just doesn't cut it; why can't I replace that action with pressing two keys instead?"

Anyway: I'm doing OK, but after a while I get tired of the mocking white arrow stuck in the middle of the screen, so I wonder if it's possible to control the mouse pointer with the keyboard. On Linux, you do this by hitting 'Ctrl-Alt-NumLock' (you'll usually hear a beep), then you can use the arrows on the number-pad to move it around and some other keys to simulate right/left/middle clicks. It's actually kind of fun when you get the hang of it; I've been known to use keyboard control on the mouse pointer when I'm too lazy to reach for the mouse itself.

Well, I searched (on my current office Slackware computer, of course) for this and discovered this page. Mind you, on Linux, it's a single three-key salute, and off you go.

Look at the instructions on that link. Look at them! You have to open the ironically-named-as-hell "Ease of Access Center", select a tab, click a check-box, click 'save'... and then there's something else there called 'set up mouse keys' just below it... Where you have to open another dialog??? And do (counting bullet points) eleven more actions??? Man, I'd hate to think if I had to do all this because I was handicapped.

I gave it a try anyway, even though that page is for Vista and I'm looking at XP. I mean, how much would they change something like this from version to version? I'm still trying to find the XP instructions. Like, now.

Well, hitting 'Logo-U' (step one of 14 in the instruction) gave me two dialogs, with the focus on a second one called, "Microsoft Narrator.' In typical Joe-Sixpack form, I grunted, "Huh?" But tabbed my way to dismiss it. (Why do you dismiss everything in Windows with 'OK?' A better label for that button would be "shut the * up!")

As always happens in Windows, it argued with me, giving me a second dialog box to swat away. Yes, sure, Narrator on, Narrator off, whatever. No, not 'help.' Exit. EXIT!

Finally, I can see the dialog I came for. Step two begins "Under Explore all settings, select..." Uh. I see a dialog completely unlike what is described. Must have changed it between versions.

Why? Why change such a basic thing?

In desperation I frobbed the nearest thing having the word 'keyboard' on it, which turns out to be 'On-Screen Keyboard.' It pops that open. So, in trying to discover how to use the keyboard to control the mouse, I have instead succeeded in discovering how to use the mouse to control the keyboard.

Well, after plenty of frantic keyboard-pounding I managed to close all that and give up. Exploring the 'Start' menu, I decide to see what I have that's fun to explore by keyboard... and hit the jackpot! It has Windows PowersHell installed! Well, I popped that baby open and beheld a command prompt. Would it be Unix-like? I typed 'ls.' It lssed! I typed 'ls -a.' It gave me a red error, not knowing what '-a' is. I typed 'man ls' and I'll be damned to Jiminy if it didn't dump out a man page for ls!

Now I see at last what everybody's complaining about. If Microsoft ever hopes to succeed on the desktop, they have to get rid of this command line! That's what's holding them back!

And there'd better not be any Windows elitists coming 'round yelling at me to RTFM, either.

Is Slackware 13.0 done yet?

With my permission, selected strips from Doomed to Obscurity will now be appearing in monthly issues of the Linux Gazette, the long-running (14 years and counting!) Linux-oriented webzine whose motto is ""Making Linux just a little more fun."

Editor-in-chief Ben Okopnik wrote me last month expressing interest in running the comic there. I was pretty thrilled to be considered worthy to appear alongside the likes of XKCD! Actually, by "thrilled" I mean leaping out of my chair to do a few backflips going "woohoo! woohoo! woohoo!" like a Daffy Duck cartoon.

It's a start, anyway.

OK, here's my 'beta' preview for the main index. This is pretty consistent with the look I want for the whole site.

I want the sections to float and the page to be liquid of course, so those boxes are going to do different things on different set-ups. In wide screens, they'll sit all in the top row. On narrower screens, they'll stack into columns. As far as I've checked in browsershots (almost always down these days, it seems), it's pretty bug-free except for sometimes how the div boxes position themselves, dropping down too far in (guess who?) IE on a narrow screen, but what the heck. That's what God gave us scrollwheels for, right?

And it validates with a big ol' "Congratulations!" for XHTML 1.0 strict.

So, everybody have a look at it, and I'll stand back and await the inevitable issues to be mentioned...

If you have a comment on the page, please specify system/ browser/ screen resolution - that helps with troubleshooting.

We've been riding the Roller-Coaster of Drama this week in the tech community, and I was considering composing an overview of it. But Hans Bezemer just posted and said it all for me better than I could say it myself.

So go check out his post, where he comes with the Flashlight of Rationality to lead us out of the Trenches of FUD and back to the Sunny Light of Reason. For once I can just sit back and go, "Yeah, what he said!" About evangelists, attempts to divide the community, Mono Kool-Ade, MS's code submission regarding Hyper-V, and Linus Torvalds' quote and how it's been taken out of context. (waaaaay, way way out!)

And of course, some pro-Mono asstroturfers who are now cwying and clutching their bwankies because they didn't succeed in making all the Linux community bloggers go hang themselves.

Glyn Moody also throws in a hand, comparing the current Mono-culture-clash with the old KDE-Qt-vs-Gnome debate.

He gets second mention this time, because, well, 'purist' and 'pragmatist' is a distinction that just can't stretch to cover enough edge cases this time. If you're a purist because you were concerned that bad choices could lead to a crippled platform, doesn't that make you a pragmatist, too? For example, I prefer Free Software tools for 100% pragmatic reasons. When it comes to toys (i.e. games) I'm just as happy with proprietary as open source. Tools vs toys - see, I can do alliteration too!

By the way, the fourth financial quarter just rolled around, and MSFT is tanking like a dead mastodon. We're talking declines as high as 30% here. Ooooooh, so that's why all the distraction!

As I recently told somebody else this week (a plagiarist thug) whom I'd rather not bring up, "Pull my other leg - it plays Pachelbel's Canon in D".

Man, some weeks, you just can't trust anybody!

So: The community around GNU, Linux, and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in general frequently gets called "zealots." Interesting. We've also learned a few things this month about the hidden world of Microsoft Evangelists, which I've pointed to as an example that the zealotry is on the part of Microsoft.

But let's look at another angle: If Linux makers and users were as single-minded and biased as we are said to be, then wouldn't it make sense that we'd also fight with, well, other technology companies as well?

And yet, you don't see that, do you? Funny, no other company attacks Linux the way Microsoft does, and then there's no other company which arouses such ire in the Linux community as Microsoft does. Let's take a little roll-call around the tech sphere. I'll name a company, and give it a 1-to-10 rating for being "FOSS-friendly." 10 being most friendly, 1 being enemy.

Now, I'm going to gloss over the occasional border-skirmish between tribes. Sure, you could find a fight between any two tribes over something. It's a big Internet. But for the most part, these are general, off-the-top observations, not based on scientific studies or anything.

Apple 5

Apple is a 5 on the FOSS-friendly scale. They're indifferent. We're not friends, and we're not enemies. When I say "If Microsoft would get off Linux's back all the time, we wouldn't have such lousy relations.", Apple is the example I have in mind. While Apple is a proprietary company, which practices a lot of lock-in on its own hardware, it generally leaves Linux (and other platforms) alone. Apple competes on its own merits. Also has BSD/Unix at its core, had Darwin for a FOSS project, and so on.

Google 9

Google has been downright enthusiastic in its support for FOSS. They develop some of the code for the kernel, they are making systems based on Linux, they run their servers on Linux, most everything they make runs on Linux, they're just buddy-buddy. The only thing stopping them from getting a ten is that some of their products (like Sketch-Up) are closed-source, patented, and lacking a Linux version.

Oracle/ Sun 8

Assuming that the merger goes through, I can rank them together. Oracle, like Google, has been enthusiastic about Linux, having their own version, having their software run on Linux, developing part of Linux, and working well with it in the enterprise. The old Sun Microsystems would have gotten a 5 or worse in the last decade, but now that they've open-sourced both Java and Solaris, they're coming back around. Solaris competes with Linux, but come on, so do Red Hat and Ubuntu. Competition isn't what makes you hostile.

Yahoo 7

They run on BSD themselves, but outside of that, I've seen one too many Yahoo web apps that demanded an updated version of Internet Explorer for me to give them a ten. They're kind of the takers without giving back. Still, at least they aren't waging war against Linux.

Adobe 3

There's only one other company you'll see that raises as many hackles in the Linux community as Microsoft, and that's Adobe. The main thing with Adobe is that they're paranoid that if Photoshop runs on Linux, then they'll lose customers to Gimp. So I'm told. Everything they have, they try to lock Linux out of, providing specs or Linux versions only when they are forced to do so to further their own goals. The heel-dragging on Flash players, the suite of software that locks into Microsoft, the bugs and security holes and rabid intellectual-property measures, all combines to make a pretty hostile neighbor.

IBM 10

IBM wasn't always FOSS-friendly. In fact, back in the '80s they were acting almost as bad as Microsoft always has. But IBM has done a stellar job of reforming itself in FOSS's eyes. IBM also develops part of Linux, enthusiastically supports GNU, publishes a comprehensive help database on their website, is equally friendly to BSD and other FOSS systems, and has basically paid their dues.

Finally, I'll lump two categories together but not rate them individually: Game studios (Blizzard, Bullfrog, Maxis, etc.) and other hardware companies (Intel, AMD, Cisco, etc.). Game studios are basically either hostile or indifferent to FOSS, with the notable exception of id Software, which releases its game engines as open source. Hardware companies are generally pro-FOSS. After all, a hardware sale is a sale. Many hardware companies need to release the specs on their products so that drivers for them can be created on all platforms, but other than that things aren't too bad. Some, like Intel, even participate in Linux development.

That's enough examples to illustrate the point. Funny, GNU, Linux, and FOSS people really don't seem to have this problem getting along with other companies, do we?

Yet there's Microsoft. Just like they fight with Linux (WA-A-AY out of proportion to Linux's market share), they fight with Apple... and IBM... and Yahoo... and Google... and Sun... and Oracle... Yeah, pretty much Adobe is the only one who will sit with Microsoft at lunch, and there's even days when those two aren't speaking. Game studios and hardware companies seem to be indifferent, but it's not like Microsoft couldn't treat them better, too.

Conclusion: Yes, the FSF, GNU, Linux, and all the cast of the FOSS makers and users are devoted to technology freedom. Most of us, to varying degrees, have no tolerance for proprietary technology. But a war with Microsoft is not a war with proprietary technology. A war with Microsoft is not a war with corporations, or business, or capitalism. To get an idea of Linux's usual behavior in regards to those matters, look to the other companies Linux deals with.

So, what is Linux's problem with Microsoft? Here, let me draw you a picture:

That pretty much sums it up. The day Microsoft quits carrying on like a fanatic, paranoid Taliban is the day that other companies and organizations will have an easier time getting along with them. After all, let's not forget who the problem is. It isn't Linux that the US and EU have to keep bringing antitrust actions against.

Now, then, before the random craziness discussed in the past two posts broke out, there's a little four-letter word which started it all, and ironically, I was just going to pay some attention to. Before I was so rudely distracted.

I'll be blocking Bing. Just like I did Live. And I totally suggest you do the same.

Why: Start with a post I made way back here, when I noticed all these dumb little one-word search hits showing up in my site logs from MS' Live.com. Naive little puppy I was then, I was so mystified that I asked my readers to help me figure it out, and they quickly provided the answer.

Webmasters all over the web have been noticing the same trend. Exposure Online says, "Microsoft is lying and intentionally screwing up your log files," and eKstreme.com says, "Yell if Microsoft’s Live.com Spammed You Too - Updated," and even other webmasters decided to block MS' bot before I did.

And don't you just love the links in the above paragraph? I love a good webmaster blog post with all the blockquotes of log files and analysis of referrer strings. It's like a geek detective novel!

Anywho, Live.com is dead and Bing.com is risen from its corpse and gueeeeeesss what? Bing is doing the same thing as Live!

Same pattern. As I write this, I'm getting one-word search hits from Bing for dumb things like 'number' and 'fence' and 'pose.' Been going on since they launched. Stuff I shouldn't even be anywhere in the top 1000 for. MS never learns, never never never never. Fake hits once, fake hits forever.

Now, if I caught the Holy Wrath of Odin of flame wars when an evangelical Microsoft Astroturfer was caught, the catchee was flamed, and I came along after the fact going "What was that all about?", God knows what repercussions will be visited upon me for blocking Bing. After all, I'm denying access to one whole user there (sorry, Steve B. use Tor)! Well, what's the Microsoft Evangelist Cyber-Harassment Squad going to cook up this time?

Was that a black ninja darting through my bushes outside my window? No, just a squirrel. Doggit, the suspense is killing me!

Ladies and gentlemen: these are the facts of the case, and they are indisputable.

July 14, 2009 at 10:06 am
The following comment was placed on a GNU/Linux/FOSS-Activist site:

This is a screenshot of the comment found here, second comment down, still intact. I'm making a screenshot just for the consideration of it in itself.

What does this look like to you? Is it not incendiary? Does it not lie? Does it not make unfounded accusations? Does it not make a pitch for Microsoft Bing? Does it not pretend to be written by an ordinary user with no financial interest in the subject?

Let us click through to the URL linked from the name of one "Jonathan Wong." We currently see (because this is written on 7/19/09 in the AM) a blog called "Armchair Theorist" with a tagline "All conjecture, minimal substance." The current new post is "Using Rich Interactive User Experiences to Market your Brand." Not so different from any personal blog, is it?

Here is his about page. The average public person, the kind whose purchasing decisions may be swayed by blog comments, so far still has no clue as to Wong's agenda. Might be any random teen off MySpace. Like any random personal blog, he links to NSFW content, makes dumb jokes, plays it like he's just another kid enjoying a swim in the social media pool.

The media-savvy and tech-savvy amongst you can decode the message, however. He says he is "a technology evangelist working for the biggest software company in the world." Then asserts that he doesn't know what exactly a technology evangelist is. Note that he is careful NOT to say the "M-word", lest somebody casually Googling for "Microsoft Evangelist" stumble upon this prominent page, with his picture thereupon.

Not until you search and hunt through his entire website do you get to this post, in which, after the misleading title and a paragraph of bubbling to chase any interested readers away, he presumably fulfills his contractual obligation to disclose that he has been hired at Microsoft on an Evangelism Team.

You see that picture of the comment he made on a FOSS blog? THAT'S HIS JOB! That's what a Microsoft Evangelist does. What a Microsoft Evangelist does is what the laws in the United States are rapidly starting to call "Cyber Harassment."

For pointing this out, for outing this travesty, this dishonesty, this dirty business practice, this SPAMMER, Roy Schestowitz of BoycottNovell is under attack. And then, for not even sticking up for him, but for using his case as a jumping-off point to illustrate how calling Linux advocates "zealots" is actually an act of projection on the part of Microsoft, I am under attack.

And if you follow the logic and common sense within your own skull and call the ASTROTURFING SPAMMER an ASTROTURFING SPAMMER, you will be under attack, too.

On the attack: David "Lefty" of "Open Source To Go" (whose comments are appended to the previous post - David, didn't I tell you that you wouldn't like me when I'm angry from being lied to?), the LXer sewing circle (remember them from the Tux500 scam?), and linsux.org. I wouldn't bother linking to linsux - I block and delete them whenever I see them. After the remark one of the linsuxers made about wishing my mom would die, I figure, "Eh, what else needs to be said between us?"

Summary: A blogger pointed out corporate-sponsored cyber-harassment, showed evidence of it, and was met by more harassment. I got involved, just to use the moment for an un-related Aesop, and have received the same revenge in measure. And that's all there is to this story.

Never forget the day that:

• David Schlesinger (his blog's sidebar lists a bunch of memberships in FOSS - are these true?),
• LXer,
• linsux.org,
• And a Microsoft Evangelist...

...stood side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, screaming their foul obscenities to the Free and Open Source community, with their united, single voice. And all to viral-market one stinking little search engine! They would do well to band up. They all mean the same purpose. They all want the same thing. They all want the same corporation to dominate the Earth.

Who else is on their side? Because, as a highly proud member of the Technology Freedom Movement, I'll tell you this today: You're with us or against us.

I know, that sounds really Republican-going-to-Iraq, doesn't it? It isn't often that life provides us such a black-and-white situation. But that's what makes this day so special. This thing is snowballing out of control, picking up more people from both sides every day. Watch the comments, watch the blogs, mine, yours, everybody's. Through it all, we will have a very clear view of what color shirt everybody is wearing.

You're with us or against us. You're with us or against us. You're with us or against us.

UPDATE: The Microsoft Evangelist 'Armchair Theorist' keeps the ball rollin' by writing what I am sure must be the longest single work of writing he has ever done, all trying to back out of it. My, he sure seems more polite on his own website than he does when he's posting flames on somebody else's site, doesn't he?

I'll leave him to wriggle on his hook. It's quite entertaining. Furiously scrabbling like a cat on a hot tin roof looking for any support, he cites linsux.org. I mean, he actually wrote, "Here is a post from the Linux community Linsux.org," as if they're part of the community.

Oh, I give up. Some people mock themselves better than I can mock them.

This post is actually about true zealots and asstroturfers, but to get to that point, I have to throw a boomerang around a couple of trees. The thread of this post is going to weave around like a Quentin Tarantino movie. Bear with me.

I was really sickened the other day to see an investigative blogger whom I respect and admire get attacked so unfairly. I am speaking of Roy Schestowitz, of BoycottNovell fame. Far beyond the original purpose described by the URL, Roy has focused with laser-beam intensity on all of the dirty dealings of proprietary technology. I have often been amazed to check a Boycott Novell article and discover hard evidence, before my very eyes, of things I'd only half-guessed and suspected before.

The attack was from Open Source to Go!, so it seems to be from a source within the community. Beside the point of who's right on that one, David Schlesinger, in the post on Open Source to Go!, uses the little spat as an example of zealotry.

"Zealotry" is another one of those words that makes me reach to unbuckle my holster. Invariably, it is a term of derision hurled at every user of every system that doesn't have a Microsoft logo stamped on it. In this case, it's even used as an accusation within the community. In this case, Schlesinger thinks Mono's just fine, Schestowitz takes the side of RMS in being anti-Mono.

Now for the wide-picture view: Um, apathy appears to be a virtue in the modern United States. What is put down as "zealotry" here, is the same kind of thing another culture might describe as "giving a damn about something."

Anyway: This isn't about the little spat between those two or a stance on Mono. I really don't go either way on Mono. I agree that it should not be forced down our throats. I would sooner have icepicks jammed in my temple than code one line of .NET, C#, or anything else that started at Redmond. But if that's other people's kink, I wouldn't stand in their way of having an open source way of doing it. I consider Powerpoint to be the tool of Satan, but you don't see me screaming for OpenOffice to drop Impress. Also, I use SWFTools, an open-source Flash compiler, which some might say has the same things wrong with it - Flash being a proprietary technology controlled by Adobe. I spit on Adobe, but now that Flash is being calved away from them, I say 'Yay for Flash!'. They had no business buying it in the first place.

Now, in the above paragraph, I probably came off as moderate overall. But, along with my laissez faire approach to "run whatever you want", I also have a staunch defense of anyone in the open source community accused of zealotry. Accusing a FOSS advocate of zealotry is like ignoring a massacre to stop the one person minding their own business and give them a ticket for jaywalking.

REALITY: Linux is at war. Linux is under attack. Do you, dear reader, have any enemies? Who, pray tell? Your mother-in-law? That one manager at work? An ex-partner?

You know who Linux's enemy is? Oh, nobody much. Just the most powerful corporation in the known universe, founded by the richest human being in the universe. Not that big a bother, is it? When that company bribes half the world's governments to stand against you, manipulates most of the supporting hardware and software markets to refuse to work with you, and takes every opportunity to call you everything from a communist to a criminal, and whose influence permeates every tiny, possible corner of all forms of media, yeah, you might have to defend yourself sometimes.

That's not being a zealot. If somebody puts a gun to your head, and you do everything in your power to survive the confrontation, does that make you a zealot?

Well, that's what's going on in Linux and the FOSS community. Pardon us, but we're fighting for our freaking LIVES! And everybody else's freedom too, even if they don't care about it themselves much. We just... want to compute the way we want to compute. We just want to mind our own business and be left alone.

Unfortunately, we have the zealots of Microsoft to contend with.

Now, at last, the point: Boycott Novell has intercepted real, actual, hard evidence of asstroturfing by a Microsoft employee. What pisses me off the most is that, without the Roy Schestowitzes of this world, if I try to say that Microsoft asstroturfs, I get called "paranoid."

Do keep in mind that Microsoft has declared "jihad" against Linux. There is the hard evidence. Microsoft hires "evangelists".

But check the rest of Armchair Theorist. If you didn't know, you'd think it was a personal blog just like mine, wouldn't you? But it's not! It's a soapbox for a corporation. A corporation that hires... "evangelists." Definition of "evangelism" courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Evangelism is the practice of attempting to convert people to a religion. The term is used most often in reference to Christianity and Islam, since those two religions mandate that their followers make efforts to recruit as many people as possible into their faith..."

How many of these "Microsoft evangelists" are there, anyway? To take Microsoft's own word for it, we can visit the MSDN page with the folksy-sounding title of "Meet Your Local Microsoft Evangelists." With a map of the USA. I just clicked on my home-state of Iowa, and counted nine profiles. For Iowa. Which isn't exactly saturated with computers to begin with. It's that important that the fly-over state of Iowa, home to more hogs and cornfields than computers, has nine "evangelists."

How many are there in your state? And remember, these are just the ones in the USA. That they admit to.

Who are the real zealots?

Search Google for "Microsoft evangelist." There's an amazing lot of it out there, isn't there? The Crusades should have been so fired with passion!

Now, besides religion, you know what else makes a zealot out of a person? Money. Lots of money. With revenues of US$ 60.420 billion split between 89,809 employees in 105 countries, that's a lot of money. And you have to fight to defend it after you get it, too.

Never forget, never never never for one solitary second, that every penny made by Microsoft is at the expense of technology freedom. We are at two mutually opposed ends. On the one hand, freedom means everyone owns technology. On the other, one company monopolizing all of technology makes us all slaves. The more freedom of technology we have, the less money Microsoft makes. It's zero-sum.

Linux has zealots? Oh, no no no, my dears. Linux does not have nearly ENOUGH zealots! The company with the most zealots is of course the one that can afford to buy the most. And we widdle peoples in Linux just happen to be the target of that.

If you need a name for Linux users... why don't you just call us "infidels"?

Bonus buck: Since one of the commenters below launched into the typical spiel about how professional coders at proprietary software companies produce superior output compared to the hobbyists of open source who are all wearing sandals, etc., blah, blah, blah...

I found this amusing, assuming it isn't a parody site (crossing fingers). Here is the principle developer for Microsoft Internet Explorer. He's a dropout, self-educated, and has prior job experience at at McDonalds, coffee shops, and a hotdog stand - and that's not even the most embarrassing thing he says about himself.

What was that superior difference between FOSS and proprietary software again?

Update: Just to make it clear, I'm deleting/ blocking/ banning any more of David "Lefty" Schlesinger's static. He's a troll. He's picking a fight with Roy, he's picking a fight with RMS, he's picking a fight with me, he's picking a fight with other people, a quick skim through the archive on his blog shows that he's even picking fights with the Apple community and Google... that's all he does is pick fights. That's a troll.

He has nothing to do with his time but fight. I've been checking him out in a few searches, he posts a lot of important-sounding things he's a member of which mean nothing, beats his chest about how many conferences he attends like that canonizes him as a saint, and that's it. I can't see where he's anything to FOSS but disposable.

It didn't work, Dave! Your attempt to get the whole FOSS community divided and working against each other backfired. We all just hate you. Back under your bridge, go wait for some other billy goats. The rest of us have important work to do.

My, Google certainly got everybody's bonnet full of bees with their little OS announcement, didn't they? Amidst the hyper-frenzy and thrashing-about of Blogistan, so far one of the most sensible, level-headed discussions I've seen of the topic is from Keir Thomas, over at ComputerWorld.

And yes, I've made fun of the Google Chrome OS hype in my comic strip, and here I am adding to it. Isn't it ironic?

Anyway, I'm just trying to keep some of the outrage in check with some simple, gentle reasoning. So, before I start putting out the fire, may I just point out that Google contributes to the Linux kernel project itself, according to the study at LWN. Nearly 2% of it, in fact. So pardon me for sounding like a Polyanna about it, but jeepers, Google partly paid for the system I'm running right now. Isn't that nice of them? Perhaps we can repay the kindness by giving them the benefit of the doubt?

Now then, on to the points raised in Keir Thomas' article:

1. "Chrome OS will include proprietary technologies."

Oh, my. Let's all get together and cast a bunch of stones! Because no Linux distro has ever done that? Cough, Linspire, ahem, Zenwalk, achoo, Mepis, sniff, Ubuntu. For each of the issues raised:

1. Flash: Well, Flash is already somewhat open. I've built many a Flash project using only FOSS. Gnash still lives and breathes, too; it's up to version 7 and some support of versions 8-9. In any case, is there anybody out there who never uses Flash?
2. Media codecs. Nothing here that most Linux distros don't already do.
3. Fonts. Sorry, that's just too small to worry about.

2. "Chrome OS was created to take away your privacy."

Or, as Thomas puts it, "Chrome OS might be free of charge but you'll pay for it with your online soul."

Oh, God. There is entirely too much hysteria and paranoia over this issue. Folks, let me bust a very large myth right here: You Have No Privacy Now. The only way you get privacy in today's society is if you do the Unabomber thing and go live in a wood shack in the woods and grow/shoot your own food. Your cell phone tracks you. Your car's OnStar navigation tracks you. You buy things in the store with RFID tags that track you. Your cash register receipt is printed with coupons on the back based on what you buy. Your credit cards track you. Your utility company tracks you. Your insurance tracks you. There's satellites in the sky with cameras watching you - even in your cabin in the woods!

I'm not making a case here for whether the loss of privacy is good or bad. It's the Information Age - here we are! But to lay it all on Google's head? Please!

3. "Google is big, ergo Google is evil."

This deserves its own post and may get one later, but briefly:

No, being rich and big does not make you evil. Let's take a big, fat example: If they only would quit their illegal anti-competitive monopolistic practices, even Microsoft would not be evil. Yes, I said it. I said it in its own post here. My whole beef with Microsoft is that I'd just like them to leave us all alone. Knock off that antitrust violation and associated nasty business - the stuff that's gotten them in trouble in the US, UK, and all over the world - and I'd be indifferent to them like any random company. Don't forget Bill Gates' 'Open Letter to Hobbyists' here. The free community does not have a problem with Microsoft; Microsoft is the one with the problem with the free community.

If anybody out there sees things in such black-and-white terms as "corporations = evil", they're entering Mark David Chapman's basement as far as delusions go. Furthermore, we need to support ethical companies to distinguish them from the unethical companies like Microsoft.

4. "Chrome OS could destroy desktop Linux."

I don't see where Chrome could do that, since BSD didn't, Apple didn't, Solaris didn't, and so on. Even Microsoft hasn't destroyed Linux, despite 15 years of trying.

Now, a sub-point there: Could it destroy Ubuntu? No, but I think Chrome might knock Ubuntu off its pedestal. It would be high time if it did.

5. "Chrome OS is not a community Linux."

Hmm, well, it could fix that.

In fact, this is a good place to list what I've been saving for the end:

What could Google do to fix these issues?

There's lots that Google can consider before this system gets released. There's a whole year and a half to work these issues out.

1. Let the FOSS community get involved. I see no reason why not. Solaris does it with Open Solaris, Red Hat does it with Fedora. Even Apple did it with Darwin. I see no reason why Google wouldn't want to. Their search engine has been running the GPL Linux for eleven years now, and they sponsor "Google Summer of Code"; surely they see that community development isn't all bad?

2. Give people the option to uninstall/ replace components. Really, if they don't do this, I, myself, am not even going to use it. I don't see how they could help but do that, anyway. Chrome OS runs on Linux, and should have GNU userland coreutils and so on. A tarball should compile on it like anything else. So what could prevent it? They can offer the Flash player/ codec/ fonts/ whatever, with the option to refuse those components and replace with your own.

3. Make it geek-friendly under the hood, without getting in the normal user's way. Google is very good at this already. With Google search, you can either compose a simple search query to find indexed pages, or use keywords, switches, and syntax to perform some special magic spell. All you have to do is not weld the hood shut.

In closing -

Before the wall of flames hit me in the comments section (Is that the sound of a pitchfork being sharpened out there?), let me make it perfectly clear that I do not think that Google walks on water. If they haul off and start acting evil, well, then, that's the time to call it. It may be a later day. Future events may prove this essay short-sighted.

But there's a ton of paranoia and hysteria out there about Google, and they haven't lived up to as much as 5% of it. Also, I'm taking this opportunity to show Keir Thomas - and the rest of the world - that we people of the Linux community can be a lot bigger than we're often given credit for.