Christer Weinigel wrote:
/Christer (pissing contensts are silly, so why the hell am I getting involved in one?)
Because the right to an opinion is so fundamental to us that when someone claims yours is stupid for reasons you (or me, or anyone) find unfair, we stand up and say so. It's not a sign of being stupid. It's a sign of being protective about a very basic democratic right, and oss people are usually very protective about those. Freedom of everything comes easier to people than "force christianity on the world, but keep your sources open!". Linus is definitely not the most polite of people out there. Had he been less than top-ranked in the meritocracy he would have been utterly and totally annihilated on several mailing lists a really long time ago. At the same time, he's entitled to his opinion the same way everyone is, and he's entitled to express it any way he wants. When he's *really* off the mark, people will tell him so. Or ignore him totally, like an embarrassing grandfather who's just gotten too drunk at the christmas dinner and started fondling his grandsons girlfriend. However, the same goes for everyone else, and Linus *is* fond of telling people "so". If nothing else, it saves time to head off dead ends right at the start. Linus isn't sacrosankt, just enough of a corner-stone that people will keep listening to him even if he's wildly offending. tabs-vs-spaces is not, I feel, a discussion that has a great impact in the world, so being "really off the mark" is not really possible there. -- Andreas Ericsson andreas.ericsson@xxxxxx OP5 AB www.op5.se Tel: +46 8-230225 Fax: +46 8-230231 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html