Limbo: famous people who you follow, but they’re not going to follow you back. Lust: discussion of sexual topics. Gluttony: discussion of food, recipes, restaurants. Greed: people interested in business and finance topics. Anger: technology and web sites, and other things that make you rage. Heresy: discussion of religion. Violence: friends who play video games Fraud: political debate. Treachery: personal gossip about your social group. (With thanks to Dante Alighieri and Evan Cordes.
There are a number of people working in Open Source who have spent a lot of time developing a very distinctive and famous (or infamous) online persona. I’m thinking here of people like Theo de Raadt, Zed Shaw, Giles Bowkett, and so on. So why don’t they cash in on this brand equity with a franchising scheme?
Imagine it. Every major programming language could have its own licensed Zed Shaw. Every developer forum could have a local Giles Bowkett franchisee, giving the real Giles more time for coding.
President Bush was visiting a primary school and he visited one of the classes. They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the President if he would like to lead the discussion on the word “tragedy”.
So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a “tragedy”. One little boy stood up and offered:
“If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy”.
One night George W. Bush is tossing restlessly in his White House bed. He awakens to see George Washington standing beside him. Bush looks up and asks, “George, what’s the best thing I can do to help the country?”
”Set an honest and honorable example, just as I did,” Washington advises, then fades away.
The next night, Bush is astir again when he sees the ghost of Thomas Jefferson moving silently around the bedroom.
Old school reports of the famous:
Richard Stallman “He is an excellent pupil. Our only complaint is that he encourages all the other pupils to copy his work.”