Sue With GPL + Need Reasons To Hate Linux

I came across some real good stuff on Yahoo! News today. First, was something I’d already read about and which is a milestone in the free (as in speech, not beer) software world. The first ever lawsuit was filed for violating the GPL, and then a scared company decided to settle it out of court. I sure did get some publicity for the GPL, and sent a message across that the GPL is NOT something mess around and get away with – a message that I’m sure the Free Software Foundation wanted to send out months after the launch of GPL v3.

However, the more interesting article was on 7 reasons to hate Linux. Well, ok, note hate actually; but stinging though the criticism (and unfair, IMHO) might be, this guy HAS made some valid points. However, what I must say is that the people reviewing Linux for professional magazines bay for blood whenever something goes wrong, but if everything DOES go right (which is most of the time), then they make it ‘the usual Yada Yada stuff’.

Then there’s Walt Mossberg, who’s the biggest moron I’ve ever come across, because he clearly doesn’t know forty two pixels about Linux, and yet, ‘reviews’ stuff. Here’s an excerpt from his review of Ubuntu:

When I tried to play common audio and video files, such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download special files called codecs that are built into Windows and Mac computers. I was warned that some of these codecs might be “bad” or “ugly.”

I guess he didn’t even bother to check the third part of the Gstreamer package (the ‘codecs’ he was referring to) was named ‘good’. ‘Good’, ‘Bad’, or ‘Ugly’ is what the Gstreamer package comes in, but it doesn’t refer to the quality of the package at all! It’s supposed to be a joke, by naming the parts after the 1966 Sergio Leone movie The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.

So yes, I agree with that guy on Yahoo! News – he does have some stuff that the open source community needs to take note of. However, the power to influence, and influence most novice users is something that these ‘reviewers’ should be aware of; and they MUST do proper research before making any adverse comments. Just this of it – Mossberg would immediately have noticed the joke had he paid any attention to the other package name. Or maybe, he doesn’t watch movies…