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Our Blogs Open Sauce Why do GNOME people always play the man?
Our Blogs Open Sauce Why do GNOME people always play the man? | Why do GNOME people always play the man? |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Tuesday, 22 July 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 3 According to wsikipedia, a shock jock is "a slang term used to describe a type of radio broadcaster (sometimes a disc jockey) who attracts attention using humor (sic) that a significant portion of the listening audience may find offensive. The term is usually used pejoratively to describe evocative or irreverent broadcasters whose manners and on air behavior (sic) is offensive to the listener." Neary is, therefore, wrong to characterise me as a shock jock. He could probably benefit by purchasing a good dictionary. But given the breathtaking arrogance that some software engineers display, I doubt that he will do so. In the world according to Neary, one apparently should not report conflict. One should not report controversy. No, one should propagate the idea that the entire crowd of developers is one happy family. A big love-in. I can see a very simple reason for Neary's illogical response. The GNOME Foundation gets quite a decent amount of money from Canonical. Several GNOME developers are paid by Canonical; in order to be a member of the Foundation's advisory board, Canonical pays a decent sum ($US10,000) all over again. The good PR people at Canonical in London were silent when I asked them for details. Hence, if one were to detect some pro-KDE statements from Shuttleworth it would be a source or worry for those at GNOME. More so the marketing people. Were some of the money that Canonical ploughs into GNOME to be diverted to KDE, then it may become that much more difficult to balance the books. And given the fact that GNOME is now a pretty decent-sized business - you can't recruit someone like Stormy Peters as chief executive if you are paying peanuts - the marketing people at GNOME have to fight the perception that any of your major sponsors is making nice noises to the other camp. These days more than ever when it comes to FOSS, money makes the mare go.
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