Talk:Jamie Zawinski

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Zawinski's law of software envelopment was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 15 August 2011 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Jamie Zawinski. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Article seems self promoting

It seems that this article mostly serves to promote the person who it is about. Does this man need a quotes page when several famous philosophers do not? Do you see where I am going with this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.62.227.184 (talk) 11:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Girlfriend?

does he have a girlfriend / wife? I want to know because it seems like a lot of these rich successful guys in silicon valley don't.

He runs a night club, of course he does.

He is gay. He has a long time boyfriend. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.32.95.54 (talk) 00:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not every male living in SF is automatically gay. His long time girlfriend is http://www.argoodman.com/me.html . This link is from zawinski's website http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/ .

College

where did he go to college? CMU?

According to Peter Norvig's essay "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years", he only has a high school degree.

That's a good question. While I am skeptical of its credibility, this source says that he is a CMU dropout. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GatesPlusPlus (talk • contribs) 09:35, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In his debt

Jamie is a outstanding programmer. We are all in debt of his work, at least in pushing Netscape to "open" his browser. Yes, Netscape did it too late, but did it because of at least jwz. What about current Internet if it was dominated only by Microsoft Internet Explorer ? --Nbrouard 10:34, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge

No-brainer. It's a one-line stub. Chris Cunningham 13:24, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Linux quote

do you, wikipedia community, consider ok to add here another quote attributed to Zawinski: "Linux is only free if your time is worthless" ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.78.82.95 (talk • contribs) 10:46, 10 August 2007

Yes. Gotta add this. It's the best way and original way of expressing this frequently observed fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.253.179 (talk) 01:19, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Free as in speech, not as in beer" -- attr. RMS Niczar ⏎ 14:04, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Plus, the full article at Zawinski's website states he was quoted out of context, and goes on to say "Linux sucks, but is still better than Windows or MacOS". He also runs Linux on his PC, so he cannot hate it that much ;) 201.216.245.25 (talk) 14:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Add that his homepage is cool

Do add a note that his homepage is a work of art: a hex dump theme. I tried but

(Reverted good faith edits by Jidanni; Perhaps, but we aren't supposed to be passing judgement. using TW) (undo)

Jidanni 16:36, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:NPOV and WP:NOR -- those core policies require that if we make a value statement, we have to have a reliable source to back it up. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a publisher of original thought. Can you find a review of his web site published in a reliable source? ←Ben^B4 17:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe http://www.google.com/search?q=jwz.com+website+awards OK I give up. You win. Bye. Jidanni 04:07, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a case of "winning". The proposed text is obviously completely inappropriate. And come on, is it really of any importance whatsoever that the design of his website's index page is novel? Pure trivia. Chris Cunningham 07:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't say that the design of his webpage is trivial, Jamie is aware of what the design of the web page means, as a tribute to his former life as a programmer. Other webpages on his webspace are similarly meaningful (for instance, the post-modern collage style of his page on DadaDodo). While a mention of this might be appropriate, I agree that it isn't necessary, and how it was earlier mentioned was a trivia-esque. Smmurphy^(Talk) 15:07, 6 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now You Have Two Problems

Jeffrey Friedl, author of Mastering Regular Expressions, did some digging on this quote. His finding are located in his blog [1]. Among his commentors was Jamie saying he, indeed, repurposed the quote. Is this relevant? 212.235.15.70 (talk) 21:13, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Notability

Is this person notable? Richard Pinch (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This deletionist mentality of Wikipedians is really pissing me off. I think it is pretty evident that he is "notable": working on XEmacs and the early Netscape team is no joke. Stop tagging articles as "not notable" if you've got no clue on what it is about. GatesPlusPlus (talk) 09:40, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If he is so evidently notable, there will be an easy argument to make in terms of some well-known notability criteria which you could express here or, better still, in the article: for example, by providing references to reliable sources. If not, then not. Richard Pinch (talk) 15:16, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't disagree with the tag (as the article doesn't currently assert its notability), I do think that sufficient sources should be findable. Zawinski was the lead developer of the Unix version of Netscape Navigator, author and maintainer of a high-profile software application (xscreensaver) and one of the key narrators of the XEmacs / GNU Emacs schism. Unfortunately WP's coverage of free software personalities still isn't particularly good. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:32, 5 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

New User:69.228.230.16 removed the tag with the comment 85 hits on http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q="Jamie+Zawinski". Richard Pinch (talk) 21:53, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jamie's activism for Mozilla, less so his takeover of the nightclub, are fairly notable acts by a marginally notable person. I think an individual page packed with an inflated self-importance is a bit of a stretch. I don't care if he's mentioned in a programming book. I don't care if he's featured in WIRED or was on TV. A lot of people were. (Hell, so have I!) At the time of the one or two books he's mentioned in, the world was glutted with computer books. I mean really, one question should be: do jwz's multiple opinions on Perl, C++, and Java warrant whole sections?? Is his every move regarding the nightclub really relevant to most of the world? That's just crazy. I'll be damned if jwz didn't put in most of this trivia on his own and if he didn't he either has one extraordinarily dedicated fan or pays a ghostwriter. I suppose we can argue jwz is marginally notable enough to be listed in Wikipedia, though having his own page at this moment is questionable. Having an endless page that runs on into trivia, longer than many really important people, is just beyond the pale. Cut it down to the essential three paragraphs that he marginally merits. I don't know him personally, I'm sure I know a bunch of his friends, and I'm sure he's not a bad guy. But come down off it a bit! Zelchenko (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ultimate source for mail quote

Preserved from its removal:

It may have been inspired by the humorous Law of Software Development and Envelopment at MIT, which was posted on Usenet in 1989 by Greg Kuperberg, who wrote:

Every program in development at MIT expands until it can read mail.
— rec.humor.funny 1989 MIT reference

--Gwern (contribs) 14:31 14 September 2009 (GMT)

Picture

Considering the notability of this guy, the article should really have a picture! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.85.169.25 (talk) 03:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Go take one with his consent and upload it under a free license so it can be added to the article. Infrogmation (talk) 14:44, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dali Clock Controversy

Why does this article not cite the persistent speculation that Zawinski is the actual author of the Dali Clock screensaver? This rumor is legendary in Silicon Valley, so much so that nobody is certain who is really responsible for the software authorship. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.62.241.2 (talk) 19:31, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speculation and rumor are not topics for Wikipedia. Find a reliable source for the information, then go ahead and add it with a citation of that source. RossPatterson (talk) 13:55, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

According to jwz himself: Dali Clock "is a very old program! The original version was written in 1979 by Steve Capps for the Xerox Alto workstation" -- from the "History" section of http://www.jwz.org/xdaliclock/ --Georgeryp (talk) 03:16, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Middle name?

Does anyone know what the W stands for? This is important information! 216.240.30.23 (talk) 21:13, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Removed sentence

I removed the "chair throwing" claim because it was based on a self-published source, which is contrary to WP:SPS:

Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.

Since the claim is itself both controversial and rather unreliable (a quote from the source: "most everything I have to say about jwz is hearsay"), WP:BLP applies. GregorB (talk) 15:59, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Former professional software engineer

'former' was added in 2009[2], and it is understandable addition, however 'former professional' (professional added here) can be read to mean he is now unprofessional. He is most notable as a software engineer, and he still maintains software, and builds software to run his nightclub, and is still called to comment on software matters. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:31, 8 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

it cannot be read as former professional, that would be "formerly professional"

Zawinskis Law of Sofware Development?

the above article redirects to this one, but it is not referred to anywhere in the text. Stub Mandrel (talk) 09:00, 21 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It does now. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:19, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

BTW this law is unfunny today: mail client plug-in is cheap, but what is more, nowadays programs can talk to each other via internets with no mails attached :-). Staszek Lem (talk) 02:24, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

DNA Lounge Ownership

I have restored Jamie's DNA ownership to the lede. This is, in truth, the thing that he is most well-known for in the current decade and honestly the fact that it isn't better sourced or discussed is surprising to me. (I don't think this is bad-faith; I think it's a natural outcome of computer science types writing about computer science types; they're excited about the code, not so much the bartending).

The section should be improved; I'll look for better sources to expand it.--Jorm (talk) 23:48, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusions of subject's personal beef with Microsoft

I think there should be some information in this article about Jamie's personal beef with Microsoft, as described here: https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-windows.html.

2600:1700:37A0:8250:0:0:0:49 (talk) 13:42, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Birthplace

Nome, Alaska, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? This WP page says Pittsburgh; IMDB says Nome. Are there sources for either? Ɛs Huvər (talk) 03:13, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mass editing to change date style, adding template to impose the introduced style

[3] changed the article to use the less readable "month day, year" format in many places, when the MOS does not forbid ISO8601 YYYY-MM-DD. This

should have been done in a separate edit, instead of grouped with other edits, especially given how this appears to have been script-assisted,
really worsens the readability of dates.

It should also be noted that the edit which mass-changed dates to the non-international format is the one which included Template:Use mdy dates, which sounds like a bit biased when there were just a couple cases of non-YYYY-MM-DD dates in the article. This, to me, sounds like grounds for partial reversion. I've reverted the edit given the date formatting change along with needlessly changing URLs to remove "www.".

Sadly, the editor grouped everything in a single edit, which really renders the version control less useful, I'd have looked at each thing separately if I could, but dates, www. and rewording are all in a single commit. njsg (talk) 08:40, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Programming career began at 16 in the CMU Spice Lisp project

No citation provided for this statement. According to its own page and readily found publications, Spice Lisp was no simple Lisp implementation but a sophisticated research project to carry Lisp down to the hardware level. Doesn't it call for some explanation how a 16-year-old would be on such a project as his first? 2601:642:4600:D3B0:9C8F:3820:42DD:9CC2 (talk) 23:06, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]