[AUUG-Talk]: Re: AUUG: Time to pull the plug?

[David Newall]

Stephen Rothwell wrote:
> The name is not David's issue, he works and uses and (probably) enjoys
> operating systems that would never be covered by the Linux community
> (Solaris comes to mind) and thus would be excluded if AUUG was just the
> Linux community.

I understand that David works with Solaris, and that Solaris isn't 
Linux.  However thinking that Solaris is excluded by the Linux community 
is the same as thinking that Linux is excluded from UNIX community; 
after all, Linux is not UNIX (tm).  We know better.  We know that AUUG 
doesn't exclude Linux, indeed that AUUG's constituency is much wider 
than UNIX.  The exact same situation is true (in my experience) for the 
Linux community.  The name might be UNIX, it might be Linux, but both 
communities extend far beyond the names.  I said this yesterday.  I 
shouldn't need to say it quite so soon.  Anybody who feels that they 
don't belong in the Linux community is excluding themselves, and the 
reasonable conclusion of that is: You can lead a horse to water but you 
can't make it drink.

Sorry to drag this point out, but I find myself no longer able to 
tolerate the stupid, pride-driven hissyness that UNIX people have always 
shown to those peers who use the wrong dialect of UNIX.  Every year of 
the 80's was trumpeted as the year of UNIX, and because of that juvenile 
hissyness the years' promise never came.  It never will, either because 
UNIX (still mean legal) is irrelevant in the face of Linux.  We, UNIX 
users everywhere, were the reason that big business never accepted UNIX 
with the fervor it deserved.  Now Linux has trumped UNIX (still talking 
the legal term) and some want to stamp their feet, hold their breath, 
pack up their bats and balls and go home.  Fine; just so long as they 
don't slam the door on their way out.  In the mean time, unix (in the 
non-legal sense) will continue to evolve, grow and be accepted 
everywhere, and Linux is part of that, and vice versa.

What's going on here, with this "we're UNIX not Linux", is nothing more 
than stubborn pride.  And all of us, in our secret hearts, know that.