[lug] Question on allowable posts to BLUG

[BOF]

Chris Riddoch wrote:

>Being thoroughly indecisive as usual, I'd like to ask folks for advice
>on how to handle the following request I got off-list.  I'm bringing
>it on the list specifically to get opinions on how to answer these in
>the future (this isn't the first mail of this variety I've received,
>by the way.)
>  
>


Talk about redefining chutzpah: a company that has publically villified 
Linux and Linux users in the worst possible terms has the temerity to 
ask them for help in improving their product!

I refuse to believe that any input that any Linux user might submit 
would be taken seriously. In fact, the only motive that I can see for 
this is for Microsoft to later whine that they tried to talk to the 
Linux community in good faith and were rebuffed.

Furthermore, I see no reason to aid a company that I identify as THE 
ultimate business rival (if not an outright enemy, since Bill Gates 
apparently views business as war) in their continued efforts to increase 
their monopoly. My first instinct would be to tell him to go to hell in 
exactly those terms, but, as tempting as that may be, what would be 
polite is simply to reply with a message saying that this is not an 
appropriate use of the list.

BOF

----------------

Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and mighty among the 
Microchip 
Corporations; mightier than any of the Mainframe Corporations before it, 
it had waxed. And  
Gates' heart was hardened, and he swore unto his Customers and their 
Engineers the words of
this curse: "Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe 
Corporations bound 
thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licenses, such that ye cried 
unto the spirits of Turing 
and von Neumann for deliverance. Now I say unto ye: I am greater than 
any Corporation
before me. Will I loosen your Licenses? Nay, I will bind thee with 
Licenses twice as grave and ten
times more perilous than my forefathers. . . . I will capture and 
enslave thee as no generation has
been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye crye then unto the spirits 
of Turing, and von
Neumann, and Moore? They cannot hear ye. I am become a greater Power 
than they. Ye shall cry only
unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I am the Gates of 
Hell; I hold the portal to
MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye afraid; be ye 
greatly afraid; serve
only me, and live."

    ---A Brief History of Computer Hackerism by Pekka Himanen