From: Massimiliano Mirra - bard <mmirra@...>
Date: 2003-07-11T14:51:09+09:00
Subject: [OT] Humans and dictionaries (was Re: My brief and torrid affair with Ruby.)

Gawnsoft <xlucid@users.sourceforge.net> writes:

> Hence it is viral,


    They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
    Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
    [...]
    All things fall and are built again,
    And those that build them again are gay.
    [...]
    Two Chinamen, behind them a third
    Are carved in lapis lazuli,
    [...]
    Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
    Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

                 (W. B. Yeats, _Lapis Lazuli_)


Sometimes there is big dissonance between the rational meaning of a
word and the emotional load it carries.

If you're wondering what the hell I mean, walk to a friend of yours
tomorrow which looks particularly happy and tell him ``You're gay''.

Regardless of any reasoning you might have built around the GPL in the
past, stop for a moment now and wonder, what the emotional response is
about something being viral.  To me it's ``Run away no matter what''.
Then ask yourself if that's the response you want to get.


(Someone once told me he could imagine the guy who came up with this
whole idea of attacking the open source community through an
emotionally loaded word, sitting back in his armchair and smiling,
pleasantly surprised at the sight of so much unexpected help from the
open source community itself.)