> They shall learn from the masters (Microsoft): a pirated version shall be easily available
I think you mean "should" not "shall".
Shall: this is a prediction of the future; this will happen.
Should: this is a recommendation; this is a desirable alternative; this ought to happen.
What you wrote is literally incorrect at present. But if I am right, you meant:
"They should learn from the masters (Microsoft): a pirated version should be easily available."
In which case, you're probably right.
IBM OS/2 is easily available, right up to Warp Server for eBusiness 4.52, the final IBM version.
Also, the first attempt to revive OS/2 is readily available -- eComStation 2.1 is on the Internet Archive. I installed it on a Thinkpad X61 tablet. It worked. I used all 32-bit releases of OS/2 and paid for the first couple (2.0 and 2.1) with my own cash, which I have never done with any other proprietary OS before or since.
I knew OS/2 pretty damned well. I am not skilled enough to get Firefox 45 to install on eComStation. I spent days on it.
Arca Noae really knows its stuff.
Footnote
I am a TEFL/TESOL teacher but not a linguist. I think that the way you use "shall" might have been a valid meaning up until roughly 100 years ago. I am not an expert on historical English usage. However, if you learned from very dated materials, this mistake would make more sense.
I have not heard or seen any direct confirmation of this anywhere. If you have, I would really like to know. I am looking at a follow-on review and this would be great background info.
> most notably, the DOS and Win 3.x layer
I think what you put in parentheses here is the real reason.
IBM probably still has the source. It seems to be methodical, unlike say Symantec which lost the QEMM and DESQview source.
But IBM and MS co-developed OS/2. MS has joint ownership of this code.
MS has a 50+ year history of being a deeply dishonest and unreliable company. It hates FOSS and only releases what it has to. MS-DOS 4 only got out became someone found it and made it public.
Satnav Nutella has no more understanding of this than the Queen of England. He will do and say whatever is needed to make Number Go Up.
MS releases tiny token gestures to make the incomprehending loud FOSS advocates believe them. Notepad, Calc, ancient DOS releases... nothing that matters.
It won't release Windows 3 because some of that code is still in Windows today.
MS does not love Linux. WSL2 is an embrace-and-extend tactic. If MS had a real clue left then WSL1 would never have been a product: it would have just extended the NT kernel POSIX personality to run Linux binaries.
Remember the core of Windows is the NT kernel and it can natively run OS/2 binaries and Unix binaries.
It doesn't because MS turned it off. NT is a version of VMS with native Unix and OS/2 binary support and a GUI built on Windows 3 code and MS won't let that code out. If it did the ReactOS people could make a ReactOS that was Good Enough. The WINE people could make a seamless one that make .EXEs a 1st class Linux citizen.
MS is terrified of that because it doesn't have the skills to do the equivalent any more, and WSL2 is the existence proof of that. It couldn't even get systemd working in WSL2 until it hired Poettering to do it. Then he stayed there just long enough to get the money and he's off out again.
The reason IBM won't release the OS/2 source, even to Arca Noae, is Microsoft.
Aside from the poor tone of this style of writing, short declarative statements don't convey the same information and leave a confusing message.
Without knowing how you arrived at "the point", you are pushing all the work onto the recipient (or worse, every reader of your comment on HN) to verify what you say and how much they can trust you. That could involve researching, checking your credentials, or putting in effort to understand/overlook the emotional tone.
"This is the answer. I have the answer" style dumping of information is a poor form of human-human communication, unless you are directly answering a closed-ended question.
Out of curiosity, are you a reader? When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun? Does it feel like work to you? Is it a slow process?
I ask not to insult, but to understand. I can't help but wonder if a lot of this demand for terse language comes from a simple inability to read well? Reading is really not supposed to feel like work to the educated, and it does not to me. For me its just a state of consciousness, and doesnt require any more effort than being awake does.
I am genuinely surprised to hear otherwise educated people imply that simply reading something a coworker wrote significantly slows down their work.
Not the GP, but I'm an avid reader. One of the books I read (Strunk & White's Elements of Style) had this to say to aspiring writers: "Omit needles words."
I think the point is that some of the extra words OP is complaining about aren't needless. It's on the writer to know their audience, but it's also asking a lot to tune a message in a PR review to the one particular person who demands bluntness, especially if they don't know that person well. If the majority of people in the organization respond positively to a certain style (which may involve some amount of phatic speech), then the person who is "over-writing" here is probably making a good decision.
Once I build rapport with someone, I tend to be more blunt, but still balance that with the fact that other people may be reading the interaction, and I don't want to model a rude communication style.
An organization can choose to promote a very direct approach to feedback (Bridgewater is famous for this), but it requires top-down work to get everyone on the same page, not just expecting one developer to mind-read another.
Nobody is advocating for a rude communication style; the disagreement is over what constitutes rudeness.
Some people/cultures see being blunt or to the point as rude.
Others see beating around the bush, wasting time and hogging the listener's brain space with fill material that serves no purpose other than delaying the actual closure/completion of the thought (including insisting on various rituals, either verbal or, in some cases, physical, such as drinking a cup of tea (or coffee) and not broaching the actual subject until both parties have finished drinking), or perhaps (though I suspect this is less common as an actual motivation than generally supposed) taking pains to respect the imagined feeling of the listener, and possibly most importantly, to reaffirm the social hierarchy, as rude.
Very much so. I started reading adult novels at 7 years old, and by the time I was 12 or so, I could if I was hurrying read 5 or 6 novels a day. I read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time in 5 days at that age. I've reread it again another 4 times or so.
My personal library is somewhere in the region of 5,000 to 7,500 of my favourite books. I estimate that I have read at least twice as many books as I own, and probably more: in the tens of thousands, I'd think.
I am also a professional writer and have been for 30 years. I've had 2 short books published, many hundreds of articles for about 15 different print magazines and professional paid articles on 3 commercial websites.
Currently, I am the Linux and FOSS reporter for the Register:
I knew little of the man. I had to read at least 30,000 words about him in a single morning in order to learn enough about the man to write his obituary. It was hard work.
> When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun?
I have about 25 on the go currently. Most recent start was Polostan by Neal Stephenson. I also have 1 print magazine subscription on top of that, but mostly, I read online now, several tens of thousands of words a day every day.
I think it is far to say I am a big and voracious reader.
Why? Do you think I object to excessive verbiage because I struggle through it? No. I can at a push read about 3000 words a minute but I normally cruise along at 1,500 or so. When I see "estimated reading times" on things online, I typically find they are approaching 10x longer than I take.
FWIW I can also read 5 or 6 other languages than English, but I am painfully slow in all of those. Currently I'm reading a copy of Charlie Hebdo I bought at FOSDEM and the new Astérix album. :-)
> Do you think I object to excessive verbiage because I struggle through it?
That was the heart of my question, yes. The only way I could fathom it was to think that maybe some people just found reading generally difficult. The hypothesis being that those few extra words hurt, because reading in general was high effort.
It seems I was very far off the mark, at least in your case. For what it's worth, I've enjoyed several of your recent pieces and found both the Mills and Hoare obituaries to be both informative and empathetic.
Now I wonder if it is sometimes the opposite problem: A skilled writer losing patience when someone less skilled is at the wheel. Others in his thread explored that theory, and it seems they may be onto something.
> Now I wonder if it is sometimes the opposite problem: A skilled writer losing patience when someone less skilled is at the wheel. Others in his thread explored that theory, and it seems they may be onto something.
Could be.
The KISS principle applies in communication as in the rest of life.
This post, and the pithier original, is absolutely astonishing to me as a Brit who has lived and worked in Europe all my adult life.
Now I think I see why some American-dominated FOSS communities object to my writing, and why I get hatemail, blogs and comments attacking me online, and entire threads of abuse here on HN. A light has dawned. I am not planning to change, though. Deal with it.
What it is saying in pointlessly flowery language is: "Please just be direct."
Spelled out: "cut the crap, don't waste my time and your words. Say what you mean."
In England, where there is a strong north/south cultural divide, being very direct is seen as a stereotypically Northern attribute. In the south, especially the south-east (around the capital), people are more flowery.
I'm from Lancashire, although I left young. Half my family is Irish.
In my culture, speaking directly is seen as a virtue. It's a good thing. Burying your message in pointless verbiage is not polite: it's wasting time. We'd call it a "load of hot air".
The expression is embedded in the title of this book:
The author was from Newcastle, in the heard of the north-east.
I regard being blunt and direct as respectful. It implies: "I think you are an adult. I appreciate that your time is valuable, so I will not waste it."
I think this is the default cultural position of where I'm from.
Blather, hot air, floweriness, excess verbiage: this is the stuff of professional liars, like salespeople and politicians. If someone wraps how they speak in layers of pointless drivel it means they are trying to hide what they have to say, and if they fell the need to do that, you should not trust what they say, and indeed, trust them.
I am shocked and amazed that there needs to be a phrase for this in American discourse. I am nearly 60 and I never knew.
I spent 3 a lot of time for 2 years in Norway, where this is normal: Norwegians are even more blunt than Northern Brits. I liked it a lot.
(I recently did a very brief interview with a Norwegian senior civil servant for work and he was full of praise for my Norwegian.) I like the people, I like the place, I like the manners.
You are violating the rule of the principle in saying this. :-)
(Yes, I am aware it does not apply here.)
It is EXTREMELY US-centric and frankly as a Brit who lived and worked in Central Europe and was previously engaged to a Norwegian, I find Crocker's rules laughable.
How it looks to me is:
"Use European manners with me. Don't waste your words or my time. Shut up and get on with it."
No, people who properly speak American English say "I couldn't care less" as well. It's just that there are a lot of people who don't speak the language correctly, and no social will to try to get them to learn to speak it correctly.
I have had severe asthma since puberty. After a decade of suffering, good drugs arrived around the turn of the century, and I've been well controlled since and I've been pretty active.
But I am better at altitude. I have narrow obstructed tubes in my lungs. Thinner air flows through them more easily. The higher I am (on land, obviously) the more easily and efficiently I can breathe.
In the old days, asthma clinics were located up mountains for this reason.
I like spending time at altitude. Thinner air means more oxygen for me, which means I feel better and can be more active.
If I could live 3-4 km up all the time, without vast expense in somewhere tiny, I would.
I have an external Thinkpad USB keyboard with full-travel keys, a built-in trackpoint, 3 physical buttons, and no trackpad. It cost me about £60 new, 3 years ago.
I use it with my MacBook Air when travelling, and a cheapo external USB-C screen with a broken laptop mount.
The MBA is slim, light, and 3 years on, its battery still lasts several days. It's perfectly able to do 8-10 hours of near-continuous use. But the keyboard and trackpad are awful.
So, external keyboard, external screen, pocket USB-C hub to connect them, which also gives me a spare full-size USB port and Ethernet.
If you don't need the battery life, I suggest investigating a ?20 era Thinkpad.
The X220 is quite portable and though the screen is small the keyboard is great and the range of ports good.
The T420 is moderately portable, has a decent screen and the i7 has a discrete GPU. Works surprisingly well with Wayland these days.
The W520 is not really portable at all but has a lovely big screen, tonnes of ports, and quad-core models have 4 SO-DIMM slots so 24 GB is cheap and 32 GB doable.
For all, get an i7 model, fit 2 SSDs and max out the RAM, and the result is perfectly usable in 2026 if you're a gamer or "influencer" who needs to edit video.
Cost, £200 or so.
And there's the 701 DS which has 2 screens, a numeric keypad, and a Wacom tablet built in.
I think you mean "should" not "shall".
Shall: this is a prediction of the future; this will happen.
Should: this is a recommendation; this is a desirable alternative; this ought to happen.
What you wrote is literally incorrect at present. But if I am right, you meant:
"They should learn from the masters (Microsoft): a pirated version should be easily available."
In which case, you're probably right.
IBM OS/2 is easily available, right up to Warp Server for eBusiness 4.52, the final IBM version.
Also, the first attempt to revive OS/2 is readily available -- eComStation 2.1 is on the Internet Archive. I installed it on a Thinkpad X61 tablet. It worked. I used all 32-bit releases of OS/2 and paid for the first couple (2.0 and 2.1) with my own cash, which I have never done with any other proprietary OS before or since.
I knew OS/2 pretty damned well. I am not skilled enough to get Firefox 45 to install on eComStation. I spent days on it.
Arca Noae really knows its stuff.
Footnote
I am a TEFL/TESOL teacher but not a linguist. I think that the way you use "shall" might have been a valid meaning up until roughly 100 years ago. I am not an expert on historical English usage. However, if you learned from very dated materials, this mistake would make more sense.
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