I’ve been in software for more than 40 years (STILL can’t qualify for the senior menu at IHOP) and I’m sure you can imagine how I feel. We had “public domain” b

I’ve been in software for more than 40 years (STILL can’t qualify for the senior menu at IHOP) and I’m sure you can imagine how I feel. We had “public domain” back in the day (I contributed to it..exchanged on mag tapes at conventions, later via BBS like Fred FishNet) and it was great. Then some f’n OG communist with MIT “tenure” and a beard down to his navel (was once a sign of hacker cred), at that point known mainly for TRYING (and failing) at knocking off RSX and AOS but settling on an EDT (written in Teco) clone, “inspired” one of the teens who grew up in the backwater shadow of the then respected Soviet Union carrying around Andy Tannenbaum’s book (on MINIX) to grab free stuff for his doomed OS and, in turn, release it open source to others. (If you have any doubt about the perp’s evilness, check https://m.slashdot.org/story/83675 https://m.slashdot.org/story/83675) I could have used any OS I wanted (or write my own as I did in EARLY ‘80s for companies we sold for ~$100M) was running Yggdrasil and the OG RedHat (had the kids who “assembled” RedHat in my sports car with my 65+ yo Chairman heading down the 10 from DTLA pondering where we could take drinking-minors to chill and talk shop..decided on, a coffee shop, of course, in those pre-Sbux on err-corner days). Can I blame the young peeps for that biz model? No. “The Cathedral and the Bizzar” guy for trying to make a career out of that sheet? No. I blame the older than dirt SOB with guaranteed tenure/income for spreading his diseased politics that many of my elders dedicated their lives to ending. I was too young (but fully aware, emancipated and working the traditional biz, not plotting to takeover the world. That dot-com crash in 2000 cost more than anyone realizes —it removed our “protectors” (my mentors/elders) permanently (once you crack open your 401K boy…) and left the handful of peeps like me looking mighty Quixotic until we learned to STFU and watch all of America’s Crown Jewels being published on the Net, “training” the unwashed masses and our sworn enemies. The rise of China was horrific —have vivid memories of former clients interrogating me for refusing their all expenses paid trips to visit the “manufacturer.” I kept thinking, “someday I might need to work on something super secret like the Old Man and his posse when I was growin’ up —and a trip to COMMUNIST China is probably a Bad idea.” I’m not exactly a Trump nut case, but I can tell you watching Mornings with Maria over the past 4 years has brought me to tears. Biden’s statement to CBS on China policy scares me, but whatever. Point being we turned those (literal) cave dwellers into a superpower that wants to kill all non-Chinese as soon as they get done recapturing Formosa using “open source.” Russia would do us wrong if we were unworthy, but China is an alien monster and the guy who enabled it (along with his cousin who is now a Google Fellow talking interplanetary IP addressing) need to be memorialized for what they are and what they f’n did. —ooh betta downvote raw experience/emotion, it’s so inappropriate…