Excerpt from a Open Source Speech given at OSCON:[Thanks, Aaronsw]
And then - there's the Open Source Model.
That Linux Girl. That little slip of a hippie girl.
She's barely noticed at first. She lives in a little trailer shack, and her address at MIT is 666 Infinite Corridor. She's got this mad geek stare in her eyes. She's got open arms, and a threadbare tank top, and unbuttoned jeans. Free Love, that's what it's all about for our Linux Girl. Free like freedom, free like beer, free like, whatever. ...
"I love geeky guys," says the Linux Girl. "All geeky guys, I love ALL geeky guys. And I'm not ready to settle down. EVER!! I don't do that AT ALL!! Washing your socks, ironing your shirts, HA HA HA, let me offer a light little hippie-girl laugh here! Just cruise on by the trailer, handsome! I'll take my clothes off. No, it's better than that. I'll take my RIBS off! You can see RIGHT THROUGH ME! I've got nothing whatever to hide! I am open all the way through!"
The A&R guys from the industry are dropping by... "We may have a star here boys, I'm liking this Janis Joplin thing... But wait a minute, Janis here doesn't do anything but free concerts! And I guess her code looks pretty tight and shapely, but her body is completely transparent! You can't get anybody to pay to see a woman sing when her body is clearer than glass! It kinda defeats the whole purpose, really! It's like some kind of totally academic thing she's got going on here! She's like the Visible Woman! There's something creepy and medical about her..." ...
And then she starts having children. Any guy's children. She'll have your child, as long as you're not particular about giving it your name. She's got a whole brood of kids, like Sendmail, and Postfix, and Apache, and Perl. And some of 'em die young, and some are mentally retarded. But the hippie earth mother is just hitting her stride here. She's a one-woman demographic boom! She's having litters of kids, kids by the dozens.
Posted by Eli at August 5, 2002 05:05 PM