Do you mean ESR going around and threatening people who disagree with
him in public, or do you mean RST complaining about ESR being a loose
cannon?
I deeply sympathize with your Red Hat Angst. The local Linux User's
Group (clug.org) is being torn apart by the very same debates you
describe.
What was the hippie gathering you describe? Was it the Rainbow
Gathering? I would love to attend that sometime. . . :) Does it still
exist?
While the factional conflicts you mention are an integral part of the
Linux community, the snotty superiority you also mention is not. IMHO,
nobody has any business looking down on others for their choice of OS,
and in my experience, very little of the Linux community actually
does. (Mostly the part of the community that's under 16 years old.)
The "if you ask a stupid question you suck" problem is much worse,
though, because it's a lot nastier and a lot more widespread than the
other conflicts you mention. I think it's an easy sin to commit, but
it's a terrible attitude. People who have that attitude are generally
total losers.
I was reading a Michael Moorcock essay entitled, "Starship
Stormtroopers," which is about the crypto-fascist political agenda
behind much of science fiction (including just about everything by
ESR's favorite writer, Robert A. Heinlein). He points out that one of
the major themes in science fiction is the privileged elite that must
save the world while the dumb masses just sit and watch, and possibly
inadvertently obstruct. The Jedi, the Lensmen, etc. Perhaps this has
something to do with these elitist attitudes? The "warez d00dz" and
"crackers" often use explicitly elitist terminology and ideology among
themselves, and it's common, too, among sysadmins. (Just read a.s.r
for a while. You'll see what I mean.)
-- <kragen@pobox.com> Kragen Sitaker <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/> This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan. -- Neal Stephenson, at http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning_print.html