[openbeos] Re: Updating OSes bit by bit

on 05.26.04 5:40 am, Linus Sarnhult at linus@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> WindowsALTERnative
> 
> - Linus
> 
> At 14:37 2004-05-26, you wrote:
>> why Walter anyways? doesn't this sound a bit... uhm... uninteresting?
>> 
>> Roland
>> 
>> czapla@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

"WindowsALTERnative"...well, that's one (anachronistic) explanation of the
Walter name, an explanation advanced in later days by Vasper, I think.

If you want the *full* story, you could go to the search page for the
OpenBeOS mailing list archives, and enter the search string "Walter":
http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/

(Dozens of results will be returned, and you will find much acrimony in many
posts...)

The short story is: The Walter name is a joke, and a long-lived one, too...
(and an oft-explained one, too :-p )

Once upon a time, BGA read a funny comic strip called Garfield in which the
hero is asked to guess the name of a fish on a quiz show. The quiz question
really sought the scientific name of the fish (genus species), but Garfield
misunderstands the question and offers the answer: "Walter".

Garfield's confusion in that naming game soon became the OpenBeOS
community's own confusion in its own naming game, because the great OBOS
renaming task was being taken up at the time in full force by the community
at large. At some point, BGA offered up the name "Walter, the Operating
System" in an authoritative tone, complete with an accompanying website, as
if the OBOS admin team had already made a decision on a final name and
"Walter" was it.

This was meant as a joke, even if presented in a sober way (like the
funniest jokes often are). But all hell broke loose on the mailing list as a
result. Language issues perhaps prevented many from understanding that this
was in fact a joke, and something approaching partisan warfare ensued. In
its own way, the consequences of the joke were funnier than the joke itself.
The real joke, in the end, was our own collective folly and humorlessness.

Funniest of all is that the joke lives on and continues to cause concern and
consternation in whomever first hears of the possibility that OBOS might
sometime come to be known as "Walter"...  :-)

Czeslaw

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