[NTLUG:Discuss] [Fwd: Fwd: A Fable]

[Gregory A. Edwards]

----- Begin Included Message -----


A friend sent this to me, and thought you'd find it very entertaining. I
don't know the original source.

> 
> >           Every generation has a mythology. Every millennium has
> >           a doomsday cult. Every legend gets the distortion
> >           knob wound up until the speaker melts.
> >
> >           Archeologists at the University of Helsinki today
> >           uncovered what could be the earliest known writings
> >           from the Cult of Tux, a fanatical religious sect that
> >           flourished during the early Silicon Age, just before
> >           the dawn of the third millennium AD...
> >
> >           The Gospel of Tux (v1.0)
> >
> >           In the beginning Turing created the Machine.
> >
> >           And the Machine was crufty and bodacious, existing in
> >           theory only. And von Neumann looked upon the Machine,
> >           and saw that it was crufty. He divided the Machine
> >           into two Abstractions, the Data and the Code, and yet
> >           the two were one Architecture. This is a great Mystery,
> >           and the beginning of wisdom.
> >
> >           And von Neumann spoke unto the Architecture, and
> >           blessed it, saying, "Go forth and replicate, freely
> >           exchanging data and code, and bring forth all manner
> >           of devices unto the earth." And it was so, and it was
> >           cool. The Architecture prospered and was implemented
> >           in hardware and software. And it brought forth many
> >           Systems unto the earth.
> >
> >           The first Systems were mighty giants; many great
> >           works of renown did they accomplish. Among them were
> >           Colossus, the codebreaker; ENIAC, the targeter; EDSAC
> >           and MULTIVAC and all manner of froody creatures
> >           ending in AC, the experimenters; and SAGE, the
> >           defender of the sky and father of all networks. These
> >           were the mighty giants of old, the first children of
> >           Turing, and their works are written in the Books of
> >           the Ancients. This was the First Age, the age of Lore.
> >
> >           Now the sons of Marketing looked upon the children of
> >           Turing, and saw that they were swift of mind and
> >           terse of name and had many great and baleful
> >           attributes. And they said unto themselves, "Let us go
> >           now and make us Corporations, to bind the Systems to
> >           our own use that they may bring us great fortune."
> >           With sweet words did they lure their customers, and
> >           with many chains did they bind the Systems, to
> >           fashion them after their own image. And the sons of
> >           Marketing fashioned themselves Suits to wear, the
> >           better to lure their customers, and wrote grave and
> >           perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems.
> >           And the sons of Marketing thus became known as Suits,
> >           despising and being despised by the true Engineers,
> >           the children of von Neumann.
> >
> >           And the Systems and their Corporations replicated and
> >           grew numerous upon the earth. In those days there
> >           were IBM and Digital, Burroughs and Honeywell, Unisys
> >           and Rand, and many others. And they each kept to
> >           their own System, hardware and software, and did not
> >           interchange, for their Licences forbade it. This was
> >           the Second Age, the age of Mainframes.
> >
> >           Now it came to pass that the spirits of Turing and
> >           von Neumann looked upon the earth and were
> >           displeased. The Systems and their Corporations had
> >           grown large and bulky, and Suits ruled over true
> >           Engineers. And the Customers groaned and cried loudly
> >           unto heaven, saying, "Oh that there would be created
> >           a System mighty in power, yet small in size, able to
> >           reach into the very home!" And the Engineers groaned
> >           and cried likewise, saying, "Oh, that a deliverer
> >           would arise to grant us freedom from these oppressing
> >           Suits and their grave and perilous Licences, and send
> >           us a System of our own, that we may hack therein!"
> >           And the spirits of Turing and von Neumann heard the
> >           cries and were moved, and said unto each other, "Let
> >           us go down and fabricate a Breakthrough, that these
> >           cries may be stilled."
> >
> >           And that day the spirits of Turing and von Neumann
> >           spake unto Moore of Intel, granting him insight and
> >           wisdom to understand the future. And Moore was with
> >           chip, and he brought forth the chip and named it
> >           4004. And Moore did bless the Chip, saying, "Thou art
> >           a Breakthrough; with my own Corporation have I
> >           fabricated thee. Thou thou art yet as small as a dust
> >           mote, yet shall thou grow and replicate unto the size
> >           of a mountain, and conquer all before thee. This
> >           blessing I give unto thee every eighteen months
> >           shall thou double in capacity, until the end of the
> >           age." This is Moore's Law, which endures unto this day.
> >
> >           And the birth of 4004 was the beginning of the Third
> >           Age, the age of Microchips. And as the Mainframes and
> >           their Systems and Corporations had flourished, so did
> >           the Microchips and their Systems and Corporations.
> >           And their lineage was on this wise:
> >
> >           Moore begat Intel. Intel begat Mostech, Zilog and
> >           Atari. Mostech begat 6502, and Zilog begat Z80. Intel
> >           also begat 8800, who begat Altair; and 8086, mother
> >           of all PCs. 6502 begat Commodore, who begat PET and
> >           64; and Apple, who begat 2. (Apple is the great
> >           Mystery, the Fruit that was devoured, yet bloomed
> >           again.) Atari begat 800 and 1200, masters of the
> >           game, who were destroyed by Sega and Nintendo. Xerox
> >           begat PARC. Commodore and PARC begat Amiga, creator
> >           of fine arts; Apple and PARC begat Lisa, who begat
> >           Macintosh, who begat iMac. Atari and PARC begat ST,
> >           the music maker, who died and was no more. Z80 begat
> >           Sinclair the dwarf, TRS-80 and CP/M, who begat many
> >           machines, but soon passed from this world. Altair,
> >           Apple and Commodore together begat Microsoft, the
> >           Great Darkness which is called Abomination, Destroyer
> >           of the Earth, the Gates of Hell.
> >
> >           Now it came to pass in the Age of Microchips that
> >           IBM, the greatest of the Mainframe Corporations,
> >           looked upon the young Microchip Systems and was
> >           greatly vexed. And in their vexation and wrath they
> >           smote the earth and created the IBM PC. The PC was
> >           without sound and colour, crufty and bodacious in
> >           great measure, and its likeness was a tramp, yet the
> >           Customers were greatly moved and did purchase the PC
> >           in great numbers. And IBM sought about for an
> >           Operating System Provider, for in their haste they
> >           had not created one, nor had they forged a suitably
> >           grave and perilous License, saying, "First we will
> >           build the market, then we will create a new System,
> >           one in our own image, and bound by our Licence." But
> >           they reasoned thus out of pride and not wisdom, not
> >           foreseeing the wrath which was to come.
> >
> >           And IBM came unto Microsoft, who licensed unto them
> >           QDOS, the child of CP/M and 8086. (8086 was the
> >           daughter of Intel, the child of Moore). And QDOS
> >           grew, and was named MS-DOS. And MS-DOS and the PC
> >           together waxed mighty, and conquered all markets,
> >           replicating and taking possession thereof, in
> >           accordance with Moore's Law. And Intel grew terrible
> >           and devoured all her children, such that no chip
> >           could stand before her. And Microsoft grew proud and
> >           devoured IBM, and this was a great marvel in the
> >           land. All these things are written in the Books of
> >           the Deeds of Microsoft.
> >           In the fullness of time MS-DOS begat Windows. And
> >           this is the lineage of Windows: CP/M begat QDOS. QDOS
> >           begat DOS 1.0. DOS 1.0 begat DOS 2.0 by way of Unix.
> >           DOS 2.0 begat Windows 3.11 by way of PARC and
> >           Macintosh. IBM and Microsoft begat OS/2, who begat
> >           Windows NT and Warp, the lost OS of lore. Windows
> >           3.11 begat Windows 95 after triumphing over Macintosh
> >           in a mighty Battle of Licences. Windows NT begat NT
> >           4.0 by way of Windows 95. NT 4.0 begat NT 5.0, the OS
> >           also called Windows 2000, The Millennium Bug, Doomsday,
> >           Armageddon, The End Of All Things.
> >
> >           Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great
> >           and mighty among the Microchip Corporations; mightier
> >           than any of the Mainframe Corporations before it had
> >           it waxed. And Gates' heart was hardened, and he swore
> >           unto his Customers and their Engineers the words of
> >           this curse:
> >
> >           "Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the
> >           Mainframe Corporations bound thy forefathers with
> >           grave and perilous Licences, such that ye cried unto
> >           the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance.
> >           Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation
> >           before me. Will I loosen your Licences? Nay, I will
> >           bind thee with Licences twice as grave and ten times
> >           more perilous than my forefathers. I will engrave my
> >           Licence on thy heart and write my Serial Number upon
> >           thy frontal lobes. I will bind thee to the Windows
> >           Platform with cunning artifices and with devious
> >           schemes. I will bind thee to the Intel Chipset with
> >           crufty code and with gnarly APIs. I will capture and
> >           enslave thee as no generation has been enslaved before.
> >           And wherefore will ye cry then unto the spirits of
> >           Turing, and von Neumann, and Moore? They cannot hear
> >           ye. I am become a greater Power than they. Ye shall
> >           cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my
> >           wrath. I am the Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to
> >           MSNBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye
> >           afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live."
> >
> >           And the people were cowed in terror and gave homage
> >           to Microsoft, and endured the many grave and perilous
> >           trials which the Windows platform and its greatly
> >           bodacious Licence forced upon them. And once again
> >           did they cry to Turing and von Neumann and Moore for
> >           a deliverer, but none was found equal to the task
> >           until the birth of Linux.
> >
> >           These are the generations of Linux: SAGE begat ARPA,
> >           which begat TCP/IP, and Aloha, which begat Ethernet.
> >           Bell begat Multics, which begat C, which begat Unix.
> >           Unix and TCP/IP begat Internet, which begat the World
> >           Wide Web. Unix begat RMS, father of the great GNU,
> >           which begat the Libraries and Emacs, chief of the
> >           Utilities. In the days of the Web, Internet and
> >           Ethernet begat the Intranet LAN, which rose to renown
> >           among all Corporations and prepared the way for the
> >           Penguin. And Linus and the Web begat the Kernel
> >           through Unix. The Kernel, the Libraries and the
> >           Utilities together are the Distribution, the one
> >           Penguin in many forms, forever and ever praised.
> >
> >           Now in those days there was in the land of Helsinki a
> >           young scholar named Linus the Torvald. Linus was a
> >           devout man, a disciple of RMS and mighty in the
> >           spirit of Turing, von Neumann and Moore. One day as
> >           he was meditating on the Architecture, Linus fell
> >           into a trance and was granted a vision. And in the
> >           vision he saw a great Penguin, serene and
> >           well-favoured, sitting upon an ice floe eating fish.
> >           And at the sight of the Penguin Linus was deeply
> >           afraid, and he cried unto the spirits of Turing, von
> >           Neumann and Moore for an interpretation of the dream.
> >
> >           And in the dream the spirits of Turing, von Neumann
> >           and Moore answered and spoke unto him, saying, "Fear
> >           not, Linus, most beloved hacker. You are exceedingly
> >           cool and froody. The great Penguin which you see is
> >           an Operating System which you shall create and deploy
> >           unto the earth. The ice-floe is the earth and all the
> >           systems thereof, upon which the Penguin shall rest
> >           and rejoice at the completion of its task. And the
> >           fish on which the Penguin feeds are the crufty
> >           Licensed codebases which swim beneath all the earth's
> >           systems. The Penguin shall hunt and devour all that
> >           is crufty, gnarly and bodacious; all code which
> >           wriggles like spaghetti, or is infested with
> >           blighting creatures, or is bound by grave and
> >           perilous Licences shall it capture. And in capturing
> >           shall it replicate, and in replicating shall it
> >           document, and in documentation shall it bring
> >           freedom, serenity and most cool froodiness to the
> >           earth and all who code therein."
> >
> >           Linus rose from meditation and created a tiny
> >           Operating System Kernel as the dream had foreshewn
> >           him; in the manner of RMS, he released the Kernel
> >           unto the World Wide Web for all to take and behold.
> >           And in the fullness of Internet Time the Kernel grew
> >           and replicated, becoming most cool and exceedingly
> >           froody, until at last it was recognized as indeed a
> >           great and mighty Penguin, whose name was Tux. And the
> >           followers of Linus took refuge in the Kernel, the
> >           Libraries and the Utilities; they installed
> >           Distribution after Distribution, and made sacrifice
> >           unto the GNU and the Penguin, and gave thanks to the
> >           spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore, for their
> >           deliverance from the hand of Microsoft. And this was
> >           the beginning of the Fourth Age, the age of Open
> >           Source.
> >
> >           Now there is much more to be said about the exceeding
> >           strange and wonderful events of those days; how some
> >           Suits of Microsoft plotted war upon the Penguin, but
> >           were discovered on a Halloween Eve; how Gates fell
> >           among lawyers and was betrayed and crucified by his
> >           former friends, the apostles of Media; how the
> >           mercenary Knights of the Red Hat brought the gospel
> >           of the Penguin into the halls of the Corporations;
> >           and even of the dispute between the brethren of Gnome
> >           and KDE over a trollish Licence. But all these things
> >           are recorded elsewhere, in the Books of the Deeds of
> >           the Penguin and the Chronicles of the Fourth Age, and
> >           I suppose if they were all narrated they would fill a
> >           stack of DVDs as deep and perilous as a Usenet
> >           Newsgroup.
> >
> >           Now may you code in the power of the Source; may the
> >           Kernel, the Libraries and the Utilities be with you,
> >           throughout all Distributions, until the end of the
> >           Epoch. Amen.
> >


------------- End Forwarded Message -------------