[Hudlug] Totally OT: Gospel of Tux

[Anne Wilson]

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Merry Christmas

Anne
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Every generation has a mythology.  Every millenium has a doomsday
cult.  Every legend gets the distortion knob wound up until the
speaker melts.

Archeologists 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 Licences 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 Licence."  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 Millenium 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
loosen your Licences?  Nay, I will bind thee with Licences twice as
grave and ten times more perilous than my forefathers.  I will engrave
my Licence 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 foreshown him; in the manner of RMS, he released the
Kernel unto the World Wide Web for all to take and behold.  And in the
fulness 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 Licence.  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.


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