Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
This is the group that has everything but an orgasm when one writes something positive or brimming with congratulations about FOSS - or something which is bitterly critical of Microsoft.
The same group wants a daily diet of advocacy pieces - and some even demand that you keep to this line.
The notion that people who use free and open source software should come to develop something of an open mind, an attitude that is accepting of diverse points of view, a worldview that someone's opinion is valid no matter the colour of their skin or their ethnic origins - this doesn't occur to any member of the group I'm talking about. It never crosses their collective mind.
No, what they demand is the equivalent of "Linux, Linux, ra, ra,. ra, the best thing in the world bar none" and nothing else.
You can be sure of one thing - you ain't getting that kind of rhetoric from me.
The funny thing is that many of this group do not use GNU/Linux full-time either - this is the group that is always full of talk about adopting the operating system. It reminds of many friends of mine who talk about giving up smoking every time an advertisement about quitting the habit flits across the TV screen.
If FOSS is setting up itself as something superior to proprietary software, then that superiority should extend to every sphere of activity.
People within the FOSS community should be willing to face criticism and divergent views - and accept them in a mature manner. The type of adolescent reaction that happens all the time hurts FOSS more than anything else.
Instead of indulging in navel-gazing, we should be looking at what can be improved within the community, where the fault lines lie, where the excesses exist. That should be the focus.
Sure, whenever there is legitimate reason for indulging in congratulatory back-slapping, that should be done too. But that should not become the main course, not if FOSS is to get better with each passing year.
The FOSS community should not wait for people outside to highlight problems within the community - we should be the first to acknowledge our own problems and discuss them. Else, one would merely be the equivalent of the hack who cuts and pastes from a company PR release and publishes it under one's name.
And if someone offers a different point of view, why there's a mature way to accept it - simply agree to disagree. The mix of divergent opinions is what makes FOSS fascinating and keeps it alive.
This doesn't mean that you should curb your reactions. Criticism, be it impassioned or otherwise, is fine. Just don't be juvenile.
David Bass
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