Ha or no Ha
I see that my last post stirred some controversy. As many of you guessed it was an april’s fool joke. To make it clear: I have no issues with Apple what so ever.
I had actually planned to do a software-patents-related april’s fool joke, but Daniel beat me to it. Thinking that another unrelated hoax on the same plot line would put me off, I thought I’d just follow Daniel’s footsteps and give people the possibility to dream up an “Apple-Attacks-Gnome” illusion.
On a Serious Note
Another reason for following up on Daniel’s hoax was that I actually think it highlights an important point. While highly unlikely, a similar situation could some day become real (substitute Apple with [Evil Inc]). How will the FOSS world react? Those 2½ questions I posted where in fact semi serious and I am glad that some people actually answered them.
If I where [Evil Inc.] I would consider going after the little fish in the pond. They do make up for a great portion of the FOSS contributors. If you can demotivate and scare them by taking a few of them out, that would be a big win for very few money (compared to tackling the big companies).
Bad Taste?
Was that hoax bad taste? Apparently some think. Maybe it just illustrates what amount of FUD we have already accepted from the patent lobby, and this subject has become taboo. Maybe I am just an ignoramus.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
No, it’s not a sign that the topic of patents or whatever is taboo. Rather, that it’s too believable to be an april fool’s joke.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Jospeh: Do you find it likely that Apple would do this? Especially in this manner – a semi anonymous phone call? Maybe it is not unthinkable, but I found the story highly unlikely when I wrote it.
But that is also part of the point – if this story is believable, if the patent threat is this real then I think we need to talk about it.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Its more the case that making libelous accusations against Apple is in bad taste, especially given how much constructive work they do in open source.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Rob: Apart from WebKit what do they contribute to? CUPS does not count since they only recently acquired it.
Considering their aggressive pushing of DRM and other vendor lock-in strategies I am not sure if they hurt us more than they damaged us.
Anyway, the choice of Apple was pretty arbitrary from my part.
April 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
it was in exceptionally bad taste. like joking about getting some bad disease and then turning around and saying ha ha april fools guys (it could happen though so dont take everything for granted!!!)
April 1st, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I think it was a bit close to home… and especially since this was announced today:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/01/1240241
April 1st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Off the top of my head, Apple have contributed code to Darwin, ZFS, Ruby, dtrace and X.org. Probably more.
Potentially alerting their lawyers to the fact that we *do* ship an almost exact copy of one of their applications as a “joke” really doesn’t really seem very clever or funny.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Hey. Daniel’s or your joke weren’t fun at all. As already said, all too believable and wayy too serious. Gnome ending up with trouble since Cheese is a copy of Photobooth is all too real. And I think you missed the thing that all newspapers do: They exaggerate wayy more.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Two things.
1) I did not do this to slander the name of Apple. IMHO they do this perfectly fine them selves. They did some good and some bad things and they have to try a lot harder to become an esteemed open source contributor in my book.
2) In my background the hoax of the april fool’s joke does not have to be funny or obvious. In fact it should be the contrary. The funny thing is not the story you use to trick people, but the fact that you trick people. More like a game of minds than funny and absurd story.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Apple have been heavily contributing to gcc roughly about *for ever*. They originated LLVM and are the main drivers behind all the LLVM infrastructure. There’s apple contributions all over our core infrastructure and have been for many years, they just don’t talk about it very much.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
If this is what the people behind GNOME are like, and if this is their sense of humor, you’ve just blasted away one of many potential GNOME users to the Apple side.
(haha april fools!)
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:34 am
So, what’s the message here, Rob? That we shouldn’t make fun of the good guys? And your message, hm and SW? That the issue is too serious to touch?
It’s called a sense of humor. It is more that laughing at clowns slipping on banana peels. Real humor grabs you and gives you something of value. On this one day of the year, we’re all allowed to be the jesters, pointing out the atrocities and the wonders of the world while making fun of the king.
Cherish it. Embrace it! Don’t spoil it by being sourpusses.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:20 am
@Toke: A sense of humour is knowing exactly which line not to cross and what is and is not okay to be played upon. Obviously you have none.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:09 am
hm: Actually a few years ago a friend called me (on april 1st) telling me that he was really ill and home alone and if I could come help him. Silly me packed candy and soda and took off for the rescue. Man I felt silly standing there, but we had a good time afterwards.
If you really want to hate me: A few years ago, when I was a student, I leaked the news that the Riemann Hypothesis had been proved by a professor at uni. People whose daily work where much affected by these news got really emotional. This only made them laugh that much more when the truth came out.
To me there is basically one rule for april 1st jokes: If you say explicitly that your claim is not a joke then it can not be a joke. All else goes.
Clearly this is not the global perception. I apologize to anyone who was profoundly offended, and not just hiding their shame behind anger. I propose that anyone of the latter kind get their act together and take revenge on me next April 1st.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 am
Wauw,- didn’t actually believe you, Mikkel, when you told me about all the fuz your story made… Guess the next world war will start on the internet…
Anyway Mikkel turned out to be the biggest april fool in our family when he ran out to see how bad the damage was on our car (after I told him somebody had tried to break into it)… You might not think that that’s fun – but then you haven’t seen our car: it’s really old and contains absolutely nothing of value! If somebody broke into it, they wouldn’t need to leave a scratch (and the doors are mostly not locked)…
Du er helt klart min yndlings aprilsnar!!! Kys!
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:57 am
@hm: I am flabbergasted by your uncanny ability to make such a precise assessment of my personal humour-boundaries by reading just a single comment on a blog. I am also in awe of your authority and trust you completely to decide where the line is. You are of course completely right.
Why, just last april 1. I killed our cat, to make the joke “Hey, girlfriend, our cat lies dead in the basement”… “April’s fool! It lies dead in the attic”. I lost my girlfriend soon after, but I never made the connection before now. Thank you!
I bow to your superiour insight and hide in shame of the new-found knowledge that I am a social misfit.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:33 am
The unfunny part was that some people will believe it, and Apple gets the reputation of doing this kind of stuff.
It would have been funny if you had used a fictional company.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
For the record, I did in fact think they where funny. I didn’t get to the blog post until today, so I actually fell for it, but on April 1st I assumed pretty much everything outrageous by any measure to be a hoax. All should make this assumption that one very special holiday.