The BileBlog

Now and then, you will invariably come across someone who smells a bit anti-opensourcey. You know, someone who will cuss JBoss, or will perhaps say that linux is not marriageworthy, or that RMS is a few pence short of a teapot.

In such situations, many people flouder, and cannot decide on how to best drown out/stifle this harsh and irrational criticism. So, for all such situations, here is my guide to putting those inconsiderate people in their place.

The first line of attack is in pointing out that the accuser works for a commercial entity, thus is not entitled to an opinion and is incapable of being objective. This is a very effective technique against almost anyone you’ll come across, since chances are very high they have some kind of affiliation with some kind of money-making scheme. So if you’re ever upset with any opinion Cedric Beust has, for example, simply point out that he works for BEA and thus cannot possibly have any kind of meaningful point to make.

If however you’re after tried and tested methods, the jealousy line is also famous in its effectiveness. Clearly, anyone who criticises an open source library/project/code without having their equivelant and superior (and also open source) library/project/code is suffering from acute jealousy, and is just lashing out wildly to hide their own inferiority complex.

You could also take the moral high ground. This attack is a bit more complicated and mystical, as it involves cryptically proclaiming the moral bankruptcy of closed-source, and imbuing code with the dubious quality of ‘wanting to be free’. While your foe looks perplexed at your zen-like refutation, you need to follow up with comments about how commercial closed-source interests are living off of obsolete business/licensing models, and that time will prove that open source is the only economically viable path for software. Beware though as this theory, while 100% accurate, has yet to be proven by real life. Many commercial entities are taking longer than expected to die off from having antiquated licensing schemes or closed source.

Finally, if all else fails, play the poor man’s card. Proclaim that it’s free, and that free stuff, by dint of requiring the consumer to give up nothing, is inherently providing a net positive. Clearly anyone who refuses free stuff is insane or at the very least highly delusional. Be warned though that your protagonist might retaliate with the fact that cost is not always monetary, and that they value their time or some other such nonsense. In such situations, scoff arrogantly and repeat one of the above retorts as required. The key is to inject more exclamation marks with successive iterations, and/or to speak more loudly. Wild hand gestures can also be effective. If dealing in an online medium, use your hive antenna to call in for reinforcements, and overwhelm your foe by sheer force of numbers.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2003 at 11:00 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.