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June 7, 1999 - (Assimilated Press) Nerds everywhere today announced that they were seceding from their countries of origin to form a new nation, called GNUgoslavia, which would be located roughly 12 miles north of San Jose, California. When asked why, a nerd representative explained, "Because we're sick of fascist crypto export laws ... and because it would seriously kick ass."
Immigration has been a hot issue. The new nation's manifesto declared, "We open our arms to the oppressed, the unappreciated, the not-frequently-getting-laid ... basically anyone who knows Perl." Automatic citizenship has been granted to anyone who has a slashdot login, with half-credits to anyone who has posted as "Anonymous Coward," and double credits to anyone who has set their slashdot profile to filter out Jon Katz articles. After much debate, it was decided that Mac users could join the country, but only if they pledged to buy a mouse with more than one button. Dual citizenship is allowed, although new residents are expected to renounce their MCSEs when they cross the border.
Several editors of Wired magazine and "Father of the Internet" Al Gore have been expelled when they failed to pass the citizenship test
of properly editing an /etc/inetd.conf file. Already three suspected spies have been expelled for attempting to smuggle into the
country copies of "J++ Builder."
Founding fathers Richard Stallman, Brian Kerningham, Dennis Ritchie, Jordan Hubbard, Jean-Louis Gassee and Linus Torvalds jointly declared that the new nation would be "a democracy, devoted to free software, open cryptography, mutual learning and knowledge, and repeated viewings of Return of the Jedi." Rights of the citizens of the new nation will include "OC-48 connectivity to every home, OpenGL drivers for all, a free laptop with DVD-RAM, and easy access to Taco Bell."
Laws of the new nation are sketchy so far, although the death penalty has been mandated for spammers and anyone who sends HTML e-mail. First among the precepts of the nation was "We will have no crypto laws. If you can come up with 1,024-bit crypto, you can export it to Mars for all we care – although it would be bad to export it to the Ferengi or other known hostiles." While the new nation's laws remain undecided, a GNUgoslavia representative promised that "anyone who had problems with the law should post it to comp.os.gnugoslavia.laws, and we'll issue a patch within a few days."
GNUgoslavia has declared many of its official symbols already. The nation's official religion will be a daily reading of Bugtraq, with
its
gospels being the complete set of O'Reilly books, except AOL in a Nutshell. The national animal is the Gnu, and the national sport has been
declared to be Quake III: Arena. GNUgoslavia will officially recognize as holidays "Linux Kernel Update Day" and "FreeBSD make
world Day," plus evenings during all new South Park episodes. The country's first veteran's memorial monument will be a granite
plaque dedicated to the old sunsite.unc.edu. The country's official language will be C, with English as a second language, and its
flag will depict a Red Hat with a double-bladed lightsaber stabbing Bill Gates in the stomach. Debate still rages over whether the nation's motto
should be "ls -lAf --color" or "F**k all the script kiddies."
The country's military force will be clothed in uniforms matching that of the Federation in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, "because they were seriously bad ass," although an exemption has been made for those wishing to wear Klingon armor or Darth Maul robes. An earlier plan to clothe the military in the uniforms of the original Star Trek was dropped, explains one representative, "because everybody knew whoever wore the red shirts would get killed." The GNUgoslavian military's primary duty will be to engage and defeat enemies of the new nation in "vicious flame wars" or in Quake 3 deathmatches. Any warriors who are about to die are expected to either become at one with the Force and disappear when they are killed, or, shortly before they die, perform a Vulcan mind meld grasp and transfer their Pon-Far and say, "Remember."
The new nation will officially be a democracy, with voting done by PGP-encrypted e-mail. Daily updates on the nation's progress will be
available
by fingering the leader's .plan file. However, sources indicated that the nation would be unofficially ruled by an oligarchic
group called "the old school," identified by their choice of vi as their preferred text editor, their penchant for telling boring stories
about how much the VAX/VMS phone utility was superior to talk, and their stubborn insistence on maintaining gopher
servers.
Entire corporations, including id Software, ServInt Internet Services and all of the known Debian developers, transferred their entire staffs
to
the new country. The reaction of other countries was mixed. The U.S. seemed to have little reaction until it realized that there were no U.S.
citizens left who could configure a /etc/hosts.allow file. Desperate for knowledgeable Internet workers, British Prime Minister Tony
Blair declared that any of their programmers who would return would receive "free eel pies and tea for a week." Inexplicably, no one came
back.
However, problems already beset the new nation. Although the average median income of its residents is over $70,000, it faces a male-to-female ratio of roughly 83:1. "We're willing to waive the entrance tests of configuring Apache for any hotties," said a national immigation representative. Furthermore, rumors are swirling of a civil war which will divide the country into East GNUgoslavia and West GNUgoslavia over whether they use GNOME or KDE.
Added a GNUgoslavia representative, "We've also declared the death penalty for anyone who follows up a segfault.org story with a first post that just says "FIRST POST!!!"