From: ebina@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Eric Bina)
Newsgroups: comp.archives
Subject: [comp.infosystems.www] Merry $*!@ing Christmas!
Date: 7 Dec 1993 17:34:59 +0100
Message-ID: <2e2bbj$67k@rubb.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>

This pleasant little news article is for all those out there who felt the need to gripe and complain at the Mosaic for X authors for daring to use Motif in a program they then gave away free. If you are not one of these people, or don't like harsh language, read no furthur.

This note in no way reflects the opinions of NCSA, the U of I, or the Mosaic developement team. Just my personal little rant and rave.

What the hell is wrong with you people!?! Ok, there is this really neat new software that everyone is using, but YOU can't use it because it uses Motif and you don't have Motif. This pisses you off, and you complain; I can see that.

If you don't mind looking like a class A idiot, you might even complain to a public news forum. But what the hell is wrong with you morons who DEMAND that it is your right, and the responsibility of the programmers, to give you programs that you can use for free on whatever platform you happen to have chosen?!

..............
^^^ that represents about 3 pages of profanity I just typed and deleted, aren't you glad I spared you that?


  1. You want to use free software? You have no rights, period. You take what you can get, that is all.

  2. Truth to tell, I don't like OSF and their licensing policies either. But unlike you, I'm not an idiot who just sits around and blathers about how awful OSF is while doing nothing myself. I put lots of work into the first release of the HTML widget used by Mosaic 1.2 to ensure that it was completely compatable with other Widget sets. Did a single one of you bozos write any free code that used that widget? No. Idiots! So now you rant on and on about how you can't use Mosaic 2.0, because it uses Motif whine whine whine. Have any of you looked at the code? Marc and I are damn good programmers, and that means the code is pretty easy to understand and modify, even to complete neanderthals like you. What, you can't program! Then you are back to number 1, with no rights at all, and either get used to using what exists, as opposed to what you want, or throw out your computer and just become a couch potato.

  3. Just to prove to myself that I'm not wrong, and the net really is filled with idiots, I sat down to do a quick hack of Mosaic to use the Athena widgets. Results: it took 10 hours to have a very basically functioning version running. 10 hours, that is probably less time that it takes most of you morons to just find your fingers when you sit down to write drivel to the net. But no, did one of you whining worthless bits of flatulence even TRY to make something useful for yourself, and the rest of your fellow nincompoops; not a chance.

  4. So here is my Christmas gift to you. On ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in /outgoing/ebina you will find the source of the hacked Mosaic (Mosaic2.0-Xaw.tar.Z) and a sparc binary (Mosaic-sun-Xaw.Z)

  5. Needless to say I will ignore all questions and bug reports about this silly hacked version. It is just proof of concept (or proof of idiocy).

  6. Huge thanks and Kudos to Gustaf Neumann, who is a GOD! Gustaf DIDN'T whine, he actually modified the Mosaic2.0 HTML widget so it would compile with both Athena and Motif. His patches will find their way into future releases of the HTML widget source to make it even EASIER for the rest of you worthless whiners to make a non-Motif version if you so choose.

Eric (I feel much better now) Bina