Finally!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Tsela Nov 17, 2005 12:10 PM EDT |
Tom, Being myself part of two different minorities (making me doubly minoritary, triply if you count me being a GNU/Linux user), I've pointed out in different forums that the treatment Linux users got was pure and simple discrimination, and needed to be considered that way. The replies always ranged from uninterested to inflammatory. I'm glad someone else is finally seeing this too. Realising that Linux users and developers are being discriminated also helps to understand why a fringe of that population is reacting with zealotry and newbie-unfriendliness. As you indicated, when a minority is being discriminated, some of its members react by embracing what they are discriminated on and pulling it to the extreme. Think about Black Panthers, Zionism, the IRA, ETA, the situation in Palestina, and for Linux, zealotry. Although those behaviours are not acceptable (extremes are bad, whatever they are), they stem naturally from the discrimination those people are suffering from, and are slowly marginalised and finally disappear when the reasons for their existence vanish (the groups often try to stay afloat, usually because of profiters wanting to use them for their own gain, but they always end up denounced by the very communities they stem from, and from them on it's downhill till disappearance). Whether we like it or not, FOSS is a social movement. That's why we find ourselves, despite the wide political spectrum that one can find in the FOSS movement, nearly always on the same side when it comes to the issues of personal Freedom, "Intellectual Property", etc... So let's treat ourselves like a social movement, and realise the discrimination we are victim of. As you said, Mac users aren't that badly treated, while being just as numerous. So it's not just an issue of size. |
| tuxchick Nov 17, 2005 12:16 PM EDT |
Ah, but Mac users are good little consumers who endure endless abuse from Apple. Like OS upgrades with no backwards compatibility; hardware released much too early and too buggy; Lord Steve deciding on behalf of customers that they no longer need things like floppy drives and Ethernet cards; etc ad nauseum. Linux users aren't into abuse, or supporting billionaire lifestyles, so it's no wonder we're pariahs. |
| tadelste Nov 17, 2005 2:06 PM EDT |
tuxchick: You know what he's saying. |
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