My commies aren't down with Linux!
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. - Winston Churchill
Much FUD has been used over the years against Linux and the GPL, most of it is brainless, uninformed dreck. (The rest is simply informed dreck.) One of my favorites is the notion that Linux equals Socialism (Communism, anti-American-way-of-life-ism, whatever) and the use of such will ultimately bring about the downfall of our economy, the collapse of American society and have Grandma working the collectivist farm in a few years.
This is all, of course, utter bullshit.
I'm not going to go into why it is so. This has been done many times and by much better writers than myself. There are several links to arguments refuting this, if fail to see the holes by yourself. What I am going to do is show that the necessary corollary to this; if Linux/the GPL is Socialism then Socialists use Linux. Ergo ad propter hoc quid pro quo sumus quod sumus.
I did volunteer work for the Ralph Nader for President campaign in 2000. As a result of this, my email address wound up on many mailing lists, some interesting, some annoying. I get quite a bit of mail from Socialists and Communists, an enemy-of-my-enemy sort of deal. And without exception, they're all using tools of our corporate overlords, fattening the bourgouisie wallets, both unintentionally and with full knowledge of doing so. (And getting rather testy when this is pointed out to them...)
Here's Socialist2001:
Received: from Socialist2001@cs.com by imo-m05.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v30.22.) id v.63.171dd185 (4234); Wed, 6 Jun 2001 17:12:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: Socialist2001@cs.com
Cs.com is better known as Compuserve, though the aol relay
has me a little confused. I would wager 10-1 however, that it came from an MS machine.
Nader 2000 (Get with the times, guys) sent me a letter containing this:
User-Agent:
Microsoft-Outlook-Express-Macintosh-Edition/5.02.2022
(And yeah, I know that Ralph's not a Soc/Com, but he's a lefty and has had some strong words about M$ in the past.)
The Minnesota Greens can't stop loving the Windows...:
