home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
linuxmafia.com 2016
/
linuxmafia.com.tar
/
linuxmafia.com
/
pub
/
humour
/
do-it-yourself-patchlevel3
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1998-04-02
|
3KB
|
68 lines
The following was written yesterday morning, mostly as I was driving to
work thinking about the recent Netscape open-source release (see
<http://www.mozilla.org/>.) A few of the edges are still a little rough.
And of course now I have to ``filk'' the GPL...
============================== filk here ===========================
/begin{song}{DIYpl3}
/subtitle{Do It Yourself patch level 3}
/notice{Lyrics /copyright/ 1998 Stephen Savitzky. All rights reserved.
/ttto{Do It Yourself,} /copyright/ Bill Sutton.}
/category{computers, humor}
/key{C}
/created{19980401}
/license{Released under the FGPL}
C
I went to buy some software, and they said six hundred bucks
F C G7
For some bloated cruft from Microsoft, now that price really sucks
C
So I looked out on the network, and, my friends, I'm here to say
F C G7 C
That people write great software and then give the code away.
/begin{refrain}
C
Oh, Oracle, Sun and Microsoft, Novell and SAP
F C G7
Make bloated buggy cruftware that they license for a fee.
C F*
They make big bucks from software so they don't want me to say
F C G7 C
That software's always better when you give the code away.
/end{refrain}
First I had to have a kernel just to make my software run
This Finnish guy named Linus wrote a great one just for fun,
Multi-user, multitasking, virtual memory as well,
And best of all it's free because it's under GPL.
Next, compilers and utilities were what I had to get --
The Free Software Foundation has the best ones on the Net.
They say that GNU's Not Unix, and I know this must be true
'Cause the tech support is faster and the software's better too.
Then I had to have an interface with windows, fonts and mice
And high-speed graphics over local networks would be nice.
The old X Window System got its start at MIT;
If it's good enough for Unix then it's good enough for me.
Now I had to use the World Wide Web, well that's always been cheap;
Picking lynx, perl and apache didn't cost me any sleep.
Netscape's long been losing market share, but just sit back and wait:
It's been free and on the Internet since April '98.
Now I have my system running, not a byte was off the shelf;
It rarely breaks and when it does I fix the code myself.
It's stable, clean and elegant, and lightning fast as well,
And it doesn't cost a nickel, so Bill Gates can go to hell.
/end{song}
--
/ Steve Savitzky \ 1997 Pegasus Award winner: best science song--+ /__
/ h:steve@starport.com \ http://www.starport.com/people/steve/ V /___
\ w:steve@rsv.ricoh.com \ http://www.starport.com/suites/Starport/Filk \___
\_ Kids' page: MOVED ---> http://www.starport.com/places/forKids/ _______\__