<snipped for brevity>
No GPL. When I first found that debate with wjbell was a pointless exercise, due to his lack of substance on point, I wrote up the anti-fud text as a way of generically and objectively responding to those few posts that I felt needed to be highlighted as nonsense, without actually addressing those anti-Linux posters in the first person.*
Other than when I have an advocacy point, or wish to engage another Linux-positive poster, I prefer to handle the obvious nonsense as a Public Service Announcement to the general public. My hope is that those who are here lurking who may not have had enough exposure to the inconsistant and inaccurate posts of the anti-Linux crowd will read my posts and think for themselves about what the FUD-sters and trolls are actually doing here.
I've noticed a few others take a similar tack from time to time, posting notices for the general population rather than directly engage the trolls. And Terry Porters cola-troll is an inspiration to us all...
I think it's a decent approach; non-confrontational and honest, although I've had a few trolls try to turn my words around. Those attempts seem to show up as rather obviously lame, though.
I'd like to see others use anti-troll scripts, although I'd request that you come up with a variant, rather than quote mine directly. My concern is to avoid having the boilerplate try to be a universal antidote. After all, look what's happening with anti-biotics and the new crop of multi-spectrum germs running around today... I hope you take the PSA approach.
Hmmm. My apologies to the pro-Linux collective. That sounds a bit pompous, don't it? I don't claim to have the Direct Line on troll-fighting; sorry if it sounds like that. I'm just trying to do my small part to help disseminate factual information in COLA.
Regards,
kick
small advocacy to stay on-topic: I had a family gathering last Saturday. Several of my siblings and a nephew requested that I let them use my system to check on some odd-n-ends out on the internet. They hardly even noticed that they weren't on Windows. Ten seconds of showing them which buttons to push and they were happily using Linux for at least surface-level tasks with no problem.
*yeah, that was a run-on sentence...
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Arlo Tol