See also: last week's Letters page.

Letters to the editor

Note that we got very few letters this week, with results than can be seen below. Time to start writing in, folks, or who knows what we'll have to print next week?

From:	 davidw@dedasys.com (David N. Welton)
To:	 letters@lwn.net
Subject: Tcl @ O'Reilly Open Source Conference
Date:	 18 Apr 2002 12:24:07 +0200


I agree that it's important to meet other developers and users of free
software face to face.  In fact, the Tcl comunity will be having its
own conference, from September 16-20 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
More information is available at: http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2002/

The Tcl gathering was previously a part of the O'Reilly convention,
but they have chosen not to invite us back this year.

-- 
David N. Welton
   Consulting: http://www.dedasys.com/
     Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/
   Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/

From:	 (Omitted to protect the guilty)
To:	 jesux@pobox.com
Subject: I just wanted to point out a few things about the
         'Jesux' Linux distribution.
Date:	 Tue, 23 Apr 2002 21:21:14 -0700
Cc:	 letters@lwn.net

Note:
Although I could have filled this letter with verses (or references to verse
numbers) to show you in the Bible why your website is bad, I refrained from
doing so because I knew you would probably never look them up or you would
want to argue about the verses' meaning, and also because I believe that
many people engage in 'Bible-beating' (as this flurry of verse quoting is
referred to in the South) to avoid a LOGICAL argument because they know that
they cannot win a true debate with their opponent. Any repartee to this
letter that is full of Bible quotes will be delivered directly to /dev/null.
Also, so that you know, I am not affiliated to 'the media', Slashdot, or
anyoen
 

To quote your website:
-------------------------------------
Also, we are seriously considering changing some fundamental OS features.
The idea would be that function calls and features suggesting evil and
otherwise pagan ideas would be changed. 
*	abort(3) 
*	kill(1) 
*	references to "daemon" 
---------------------------------------

 Can you not see the fundamentally wrong things going on in just this
section of text? You make several statements that you may not even realize:

 I.  The words abort, kill, and daemon are fundamentally evil, so much so
that we want to go to the trouble of rewriting *NIX core code to take these
words out.
 I'd like that the word abort does not specifically refer to human
abortions. It is used by NASA, the US Military, and many other unarguably
beneficial groups to mean 'stop'. 'Abort' is much harder to confuse via
radio communication, that is why 'start' and 'stop' are not used. Killing is
not always an evil act - haven't any of you ever had a dog put to sleep
because it was incurable? Or have any of you ever hunted? That too is
killing. 'Daemon' is actually a word that has roots that mean 'servant' or
''worker' -  it was twisted into religious meaning by zealots like yourself.
Complying to the POSIX standard requires that you have these functions, and
that they work as the POSIX standard requires. Changing them will make you
LOSE users - or at least people who believe in mutually agreed-upon industry
standards.

 II. In the sentence fragment "function calls and features suggesting evil
and otherwise pagan ideas" you suggest that pagan is a synonym for evil, or
that all pagan things are evil. This is an example of extreme
closemindedness that is (to me) strongly reminicent of the Pharisees and
Saducees. Paganism is an easier way of saying non-Christianism. NOT
ANTI-Christianism, just not Christian. By the true definition, Islamic
people are pagans - even though Christians and Jews worship the same God
they do, Jews are pagans - even though Jesus WAS a Jew, and Messianic Jews -
who believe in Christ as the Redeemer and Messiah but do NOT consider
themselves Christians (just Jews who follow Christ) are pagans. In all three
examples I have given just now, I hope I have shown you how inaccurate and
wrong your statements are. I have not even mentioned the fact that there is
a modern pagan movement that you are misaligning very badly with that
statement as well.

 III. You have a large amount of statements on your website that are NOT
things a Christian should say. Exemplia Gratia: "  We rightfully criticized
slashdot.org previously, but we did not do so with a loving spirit. For
that, we apologize. We still will not bow to the media, we do not need the
media, and we will succeed in providing a distribution for you. If God is
for us, who can be against us?" In this statement, you indicate that:
A - You have the right to judge anyone. I could indicate several parts of
the new and old testament that tell the story of how someone was punished
because they thought they knew God's will better than He Himself did.
B - Is it possible to criticize someone with a loving spirit? I believe this
is a contradiction. When you criticized Slashdot.org, you certainly (in my
humble opinion) did not intend it for their edification. You were 'trolling'
as some people on the Net refer to it. I', sure you object to the term troll
as well, claiming that it has demonic origins. You have a plank in your eye,
and you are trying to remove a mote from the eye of GNU/Linux. You need to
work on getting the plank out of your own eye first. If I had not banned
myself from 'Bible-bashing', I would have included some words from Paul
defining exactly what Love is and is not. What you are doing is not love, or
joyously spreading the Gospel. With the simple announcement of your intent,
you have malaligned and vilified a broad swath of the world's population.
This is not God's Work.
C - You indicate that the 'media' wants you to bow to them and need them.
You say this in the same paragraph that you mention your 'criticism' of
Slashdot. You are indicating that Slashdot.org is 'the media' and the
popular connotation of 'the media' suggests that there is a large syndicate
of the news/information industry that want you to bow to them and need them
and who wants to control you. By printing what you thought was a unique and
rebellious statement, you are technically guilty of Libel, which is better
known as slander. If Slashdot was able to prove that you caused them fiscal
damages by your statement, you could be taken to court for that. I'm not
suggesting that Slashdot would do anything like that, but rather that you
should think about what you are saying before you say it. Slandering
Slashdot - and trying to use that action as an example of how Christian you
are - is a bad example and reflects badly on all Christians. Yes, that
includes me.

 If you are truly trying to make a linux distribution to spread the gospel,
why are you getting involved in the politics of software? You stated that
someone could only get SAINT from your distribution if they earned it. Don't
you know they can download it from the author of the program? Don't you know
that SAINT and SATAN are just silly acronyms? I'm out of patience. Your
site, http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Node/4081/ badly needs to be
rewritten without all of the hate and narrow-minded opinions. Instead of
writing a linux distribution about your religion, you should go learn what
being a Christian is really supposed to be.


P.S. Encryption isn't about having anything to hide, it's about privacy and
your right to keep the government and other people out of your own email.

From:	 Jesux Developers <jesux@pobox.com>
To:	 (omitted)
Subject: Re: I just wanted to point out a few things about the 'Jesux'
	 Linux distribution.
Date:	 Wed, 24 Apr 2002 01:11:02 -0400
Cc:	 letters@lwn.net

At 21:21 -0700 2002.04.23, somebody wrote:
> I.  The words abort, kill, and daemon are fundamentally evil, so much so
>that we want to go to the trouble of rewriting *NIX core code to take these
>words out.

No, that was never said or hinted.  What was said is that those words
*suggest* evil ideas.  The very next line spells it out: "NOTE: we do not
believe words are inherently bad."  So, you are incorrect.

>A - You have the right to judge anyone. I could indicate several parts of
>the new and old testament that tell the story of how someone was punished
>because they thought they knew God's will better than He Himself did.

Of course we have the right to judge.  The Bible doesn't say don't judge,
it says judge not, lest ye be judged.  The popular interpretation of that,
that we should not judge, is false.  It means that we should judge in
humility, knowing that we will be judged by the same standards.  And we
have that standard by which to judge: the Bible.

>B - Is it possible to criticize someone with a loving spirit?

Of course.  You obviously don't know what "criticize" means.  Or maybe you
don't know what love is.  When I am being a jerk and my wife tells me to
lighten up, she is criticizing me, in love.

>If I had not banned
>myself from 'Bible-bashing', I would have included some words from Paul
>defining exactly what Love is and is not.

Paul criticized many people in love.  He would tell churches that they were
acting horribly.  Christ called the Pharisees and Sadducees a "brood of
vipers."  Or perhaps Christ wasn't be loving?

>When you criticized Slashdot.org, you certainly (in my
>humble opinion) did not intend it for their edification.

Your opinion, humble or not, is incorrect.

>I', sure you object to the term troll
>as well, claiming that it has demonic origins.

You're surely mistaken.  However, go with the troll thing, you might be on
to something.

>By printing what you thought was a unique and
>rebellious statement, you are technically guilty of Libel, which is better
>known as slander.

This is entirely false.  First, slander and libel are not the same thing.
Both are forms of defamation; slander being the lesser form, usually
verbal, and libel being the big one, primarily written.

>If Slashdot was able to prove that you caused them fiscal
>damages by your statement, you could be taken to court for that.

No.  They would have to prove that what we said was false, that people
believed it, *and* that it damaged their reputation.  Fiscal damages are
not relevant to the case itself, though would be a basis for the court
award should the plaintiff win.  But frankly, the comments posted on
Slashdot itself every day are far worse than anything we wrote, and proving
the last bit would be completely impossible.

Of course, we never wrote anything remotely defamatory anyway; I can't see
why you think we did.  Claiming Slashdot is part of "the media" and that
they want us to submit ourselves to them isn't remotely defamatory.

>I'm out of patience.

Well, good.  You are also out of a lot of other things, like, perhaps, the
ability to really do your research (if you ever had it to begin with).
Here's a hint: click on some of the links on the Jesux site.

-- 
Jesux Developers