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Linux Gratitude

Happy Holidays!

Is Linux so inconceivable that it is hard for users to say thank you? In her podcast Why don’t more people say thank you?, Cathy Malmrose does a great job telling her own story as an analogy for trying to understand the Linux user community. Cathy is the CEO of Zareaon right here in Berkeley and a supporter of BerkeleyLUG. Please let her know your thoughts and/or comment here.

Research is beginning to show that gratitude is a learned skill that can be improved with practice. I think this hour long 2009 Google Tech Talk by Richard J. Davidson is worth the effort. The Charter for Compassion focuses on the global scale.

As it is the 4th Sunday of the month I hope the meeting from noon – three at Bobby G’s Pizzeria goes well today. The second Sunday of December is the 11th. As the fourth Sunday falls on Christmas day I think it’s safe to say that the meeting is canceled. After the 11th we will next see you on Sun, Jan 8th.

8 thoughts on “Linux Gratitude

  1. Hello M Hewitt, it’s a good question. Cathy can’t represent all of Linux, but start with what you use. Firefox or Thunderbird? http://mozilla.org What distro do you use? Thank them. What software do you use on that distro? Seen a problem with a program you use? How about trying to report it. Contributing your time not only helps the software authors but other users too.

  2. The 1st question posed here: “Is Linux so inconceivable that it is hard for users to say thank you?”
    To this, I’ll throw a fairly simple counter-question: Is it so inconceivable that Linux representatives, such as this Cathy Malmrose, can post their thoughts DIRECTLY to this BerkeleyLUG blog requesting gratitude from end-users, rather than somehow granting messengers such as grantbow to do this task for them??

  3. I am pretty sure that grantbow was not solicited by anyone to write this. Cathy’s efforst are certainly worthy of the thanks of many in our community.

    The people that are making the biggest difference to OSS tend to also be the ones with the least amount of time. Gratitude is not something that is often sought out, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t deserved.

  4. Berkeleylug welcomes additional blog submissions and I hope negative comments do not distract from future contributions on this site.

    I had a hard time trying to identify each embedded misconception and comprehensively respond to the comment by goossbears above. I was hurt but the comment. I personally have experienced goossbears as a very knowledgeable and helpful person, giving of his own time to help others at our regular meetings. My first reaction was that his account was hacked but it seems it was not. I am baffled by the conclusions he has come to and expressed to all readers of this blog.

    To be absolutely sure there are no further misunderstandings, neither Cathy nor anyone else asked me to write this blog post. Bay Area Linux users including some berkeleylug members have purchased from Zareason of their own accord. I do not recall them asking for anything in return for their support of berkeleylug. As a Zareason podcast subscriber I happened to hear Cathy’s linked podcast. I added some other links I thought relevant. I noticed that no other berkeleylug member had posted a blog entry before the regular berkeleylug meeting so I felt inspired to write something to help our website show visible activity which has been absent in the past.

    No request was made of readers to be grateful to Zareason or anyone else in particular. The discussion was aimed to describe the common behavior and some misconceptions of some Linux users. Take what you like and leave the rest. *If* you choose to show your gratitude somewhere, several suggestions were given, primarily Linux distributions and upstream developers.

    The not so simple accusation embedded above is unfair and a gross misinterpretation. I was not “sent” by some fictitious Zareason corporate office as a messenger, brow beating berkeleylug members into feeling guilty, buying from Zareason and expressing gratitude to Zareason. In fact Zareason is a small, family run operation with very few employees. I fail to see any support for the above conclusions in what I wrote or in the linked podcast by Cathy. In fact, quite the opposite was expressed. Cathy specifically was grateful to her customers who have provided her with feedback. She also told the story of how she was overwhelmed with gratitude for her family’s generosity when she lost her cell phones just before a trip.

    Also please consider the date – Thanksgiving weekend! Gratitude was being discussed at most dinner tables in the US and at least our dinner table outside the US in Nairobi, Kenya. This was not some foreign, out of the blue, strange topic making a request for anything other than pause to reflect on a topic that, in my experience, isn’t spoken about very much in Linux circles.

  5. grantbow MAN, I’ve been following this here commenty thing, and obviously go-man’s question ain’t so simple. no duh.

    Da bottom line is dzat while Cat and her Zareason peeps could conceivably post replies directly to any damn thread they wish, they have Zeroreason to have ta do it. O.K. maybe they’d do replies on way outside fat chance they cant sell enough of their ‘puters before Christmas and they then feel an urgency of having to reach out for ++sales in the next wk. That’d be a Zareasonable F-A-C-T for their own bottm line, outside chance that it is.

    words from the wise, some of us can see how Cat&yourn commenty things are yes indeedy subtle requests for Linux Gratitude. so git offn ya highhorse with thine agony ‘o denial bull5h1t and finally admit what thee needs te, ‘stead of trying to cput down&ignore little ‘ol go-man’s own Linux Gratitude!!!!!!!!!!!

    but when all is said that has to be said, let us all wish some ’60s Berkeley P-E-A-C-E to yourself grantbow,M-A-N! Merry Christmas 2 ya. hummma hummma hum hummmmmmmmm

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