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  From: LEVY, Lea <LLEVY@baea.com.au>
  To  : slug@slug.org.au, "'linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au' <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:43:46 +0930

FW: The Gospel of Tux

This is a bit long for the list, but I thing it just so excellent and
defintely on topic that i had to post it

Lea

 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> Every generation has a mythology. Every millenium has a doomsday
> cult. Every legend gets the distortion knob wound up until the
> speaker melts. Archaeologists 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 millenium 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 Licenses 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
> License."  But they reasoned thus out of pride and not wisdom, not
> forseeing 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; mighter 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 loose
> your Licences? Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as grave and
> ten times more perilous than my forefathers. I will engrave my License
> 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 recognised 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
> License. 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.
> 
> 
> Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.
> 
> 
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