Faux FLOSS Fundamentalism "In the Wild"
By way of a concrete example, I offer this email thread, from the ubuntu-devel list around the beginning of June.
It shows "Mark Fink" (a regular anti-Mono "advocate" who, as you will see, constantly points back to Boycott Novell and praises Roy Schestowitz, and who you may remember from that previous posting), asserting (without particular evidence) that there is "shameful censoring of mono [sic] opposition" going on, demanding that Mono (and consequently F-Stop and Tomboy) be removed from the Ubuntu default install, and further demanding that Jo Shields be removed from his involvement in Ubuntu and David Siegel be fired from Canonical, with much vituperation and insult directed at list members who attempt to help him see reason along the way.
"Mark Fink" and "Remco"--who comes in a bit later in the thread, and starts off seeming semi-reasonable, only to go progressively deeper off the deep end as things proceed--represent the "faux FLOSS fundamentalists" here.
Everybody else on the thread represents the "real FLOSS community", as do the vast majority of the hundreds, if not thousands, of subscribers to that list who didn't comment. Most of us on the thread know, or are at least aware, of one another; none of us has much of a clue who Remco and Mr. Fink are.
Some Characteristics of "Faux FLOSS Fundamentalism"
- Lack of meaningful participation in the community, other than "advocacy"
- A litany of demands about what must be done (not by them, by other people) so that software can remain free
- Most typically, an irrational and visceral hatred for Microsoft, and usually, Novell, as well as contempt for anyone employed by or associated with those companies, either currently or in the past
- Claims of representing the FLOSS community while at the same time not actually knowing anyone within the FLOSS community
- Scorn for opinions different than their own, frequently deriding others as "Microsoft shills" or "Novell stooges"
- Insistence on uniformity of though: if one doesn't espouse completely unnuanced versions of the most extreme positions of the "free software movement", then one is "not a true free software or GNU/Linux person" or "a freedom-hater"
- Insistence on conformance to minor points: GNU/Linux versus Linux, free software versus open source software, etc., frequently to the point of refusing to even discuss matters unless the other person conforms to their terminology
- A tendency to display great dismay, somewhat akin to the sort that Tomas de Torquemada might display when faced with gross and undeniable blasphemy, at criticism of the FSF or Richard M. Stallman, coupled with a complete willingness to criticize Linus Torvalds
