[ale] linux community need attitude adjustment?

[Cade Thacker]

Please forgive any misspelling and grammer, i am typing in a hurry.

I am hoping that this email will start a good discussion. I respect 
the opinions on the ALE list members and feel that good ideas and 
level heads are out there among you, so here goes....   

<baring my soul>
I love linux and open source, I love what it stands for and what 
possibilities lying ahead of it, BUT the last few months I have 
become more and more frustrated with the community's attitude.  The 
other day, slashdot posted an article about there is soon going to be 
more Java coders than C/C++ coders. Most all of the comments saw this 
as being a horrible, horrible thing. One comment was something along 
the lines of "i'd like to see a DVD player written in java!."  This 
just capped off my frustration.  I don't really see Java gaining more 
developers at the expense of C/C++.  They both have their VERY 
important places. Somebody still has to write the VM! Anyway, maybe I 
just don't have the right(wrong) attitude, but I am sometimes feel 
that linux could be so much farther along if we did not have people 
cussing out hardware venders because they won't supply a driver, or 
jumping all over somebody who uses Microsoft. Nobody is forcing them 
to supply us with a driver, the same way nobody is forcing us to 
linux! I help out my parents in their 4 person law office. I would 
never consider replacing there windows boxes with linux boxes. Why? 
because I love Microsoft? Because I don't support linux?(as some 
would say), NO, Becase my parents need to type letters. Thats all. 
They don't need a leatherman, they need a freakin screwdriver. When 
OpenOffice(or whatever) is comparable to MS Office then I will then 
seriously consider switching them, but even then some of their law 
software is Windows specific! Will I replace their windows NT server 
with a linux box? maybe one day, but if it ain't broke, i ain't 
fixing it. Anyway, I am a little off topic, but the main point of 
this email is:

Does anybody else think that the linux community in general has a bad 
attitude?

maybe I am more of the Martin Luther King Jr type of change then the 
Black Panthers. Thanks for listening.

</baring my soul>

Sorry for the rant, but will somebody please try and restore my faith 
in the humanity of the linux community. I love the community. It 
feels good to be part of something so cool, but more and more I just 
feel like my attitude is so different from the rest of the people.

if you made it down to this line, thank you so much for reading my 
whole rant ;-)

--cade
=========================
On Linux vs Windows --
Remember amateurs built the ark - professionals built the Titanic
=========================


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