Trust (non-DB)

[Mike Touloumtzis]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2001 at 03:46:28PM -0500, Frank Tobin wrote:
> Mike Touloumtzis, at 12:20 -0800 on 2001-11-19, wrote:
> 
>    Most of the people who really get rude on open mailing lists never
>    contribute a line of code.  I'm not sure if they should be
>    considered in the "open source camp".  It's a consequence of having
>    open mailing lists that loudmouths make themselves heard.
> 
> FYI: I am a Free Software and Open Source advocate, and I *do* contribute
> code.

I wasn't trying to point the finger at anyone.  I was just making the
general observation that one shouldn't equate what one hears on a project
mailing list with the attitudes of the project team.  It happens all
the time, unfortunately: tech "reporter" posts to linux-kernel, lots
of nobodies flame the hell out of him, reporter writes article claiming
that Linux developers are a bunch of flaming assholes.

My motive for mosting was to assert that it's better to simply be nice on
mailing lists than to try to achieve unanimity, since you'll just wear
yourself out that way.  As I'm proving right now, and you recognize,
it's all too easy to get dragged that way against your will :-P.

> Free Softare is beneficial not only to developers but also to plain old
> end users, who can rely on any scrutiny the community of developrs to
> analyze code.  For the most part, I'm a user of GnuPG, but I rely on the
> community of developers who contribute more regularly to GnuPG to look at
> it.  Hence, GnuPG being Free Software is beneficial to me as an end user.
> Hence, there is no real hypocrisy going on when end users talk of benefits
> of Free Software.

Trust me, you're preaching to the choir here :-).  I'm not about to
entrust a non-free program with my GPG keys.

miket