Talk:Theo de Raadt

Very bitter man, said some very nasty things!

  But in many cases, accurate things.

A jealous guy...

You have to understand that he is an ex-South African, from a South African culture that does not tolerate BS and says it like it is. They are goal-oriented and don't suffer fools gladly; in this, they have much in common with the Israelis. People from some cultures often find Israelis and South Africans to be abrasive and rude, but what's impolite in one culture is just straight talk in another. I speak from experience, being an ex-South African myself and having been frequently chastised in the USA for being undiplomatic. The difference between myself and Theo is that I have been beaten up enough to tone down my delivery and be more politically correct, and he is made of tougher stuff, I guess. I think Theo's (and my) point of view is that if people in general spent less time worrying about offending others, and more time on actually getting the job done, they would be a lot more productive (but there would probably be more wars :)

Context

Anyone have context for the Linus Torvalds quote that was simply, "Difficult"? --Shawn K. Quinn 22:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Some more

I started to collect quotes from Theo on the tech@openbsd lists back in 2000, and here they are:

[3 Feb 2000 On RMS's definition of 'free']

We prefer "free, do as you like, incorporate it into a baby mulching machine if that turns your crank".

[11 Feb 2000 On RMS's off-topic postings to tech@]

Away, Satan.

[20 May 2000 In response to the idea of non-root users allocating ports < 1024]

I have an idea. Let's build a traintrack to the moon.

[29 Jun 2000] After someone expressed concern about a warning message:

Look at what it says: w a r n i n g. ie warning: do not put hand on hot stove element

warning: walking into traffic may result in injury

Half of you want an operating system that tells you what is going on.

The other half of you want us to remove any partially informative piece of text that disturbs you.

I wish you'd just find a room and bludgeon each other.