From: Sean O'Dell Date: 2003-07-11T16:51:54+09:00 Subject: Re: [OT] Humans and dictionaries (was Re: My brief and torrid affairwith Ruby.) "Massimiliano Mirra - bard" wrote in message news:87llv5hiv2.fsf@prism.localnet... > Gawnsoft 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.) You know, I actually recognized that the emotional charge behind the word "viral" might be why its application to the GPL was being so hard-fought against, but thought that perhaps the truth behind such a term might shine through and we could use it to describe what we know about the GPL. I'm thinking now that maybe we ought to have another word to describe it; one less predictably antagonistic. How about we start calling it "socialist licensing" instead? Sean O'Dell