V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (February 2016):
UTSL
Use The Source, Luke (telecommunication, Usenet, IRC)
The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
UTSL
//, n.
[Unix] On-line acronym for ?Use the Source, Luke? (a pun on Obi-Wan
Kenobi's ?Use the Force, Luke!? in Star Wars) ? analogous to RTFS (sense
1), but more polite. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would
be better off reading the source code that supports whatever feature is
causing confusion, rather than making yet another futile pass through the
manuals, or broadcasting questions on Usenet that haven't attracted wizard
s to answer them.
Once upon a time in elder days, everyone running Unix had source. After
1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so this objurgation was in theory
appropriately directed only at associates of some outfit with a Unix source
license. In practice, bootlegs of Unix source code (made precisely for
reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that one could utter it at almost
anyone on the network without concern.
Nowadays, free Unix clones have become widely enough distributed that
anyone can read source legally. The most widely distributed is certainly
Linux, with variants of the NET/2 and 4.4BSD distributions running second.
Cheap commercial Unixes with source such as BSD/OS are accelerating this
trend.
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
Use the Source Luke
UTSL
(UTSL) (A pun on Obi-Wan Kenobi's "Use
the Force, Luke!" in "Star Wars") A more polite version of
RTFS. This is a common way of suggesting that someone would
be better off reading the source code that supports whatever
feature is causing confusion, rather than making yet another
futile pass through the manuals, or broadcasting questions on
Usenet that haven't attracted wizards to answer them.
Once upon a time in Elder Days, everyone running Unix had
source. After 1978, AT&T's policy tightened up, so this
objurgation was in theory appropriately directed only at
associates of some outfit with a Unix source licence. In
practice, bootlegs of Unix source code (made precisely for
reference purposes) were so ubiquitous that one could utter it
at almost anyone on the network without concern.
Nowadays, free Unix clones are becoming common enough that
almost anyone can read source legally. The most widely
distributed is probably Linux. FreeBSD, NetBSD,
386BSD, jolix also have their followers. Cheap commercial
Unix implementations with source such as BSD/OS from BSDI
are accelerating this trend.
(1996-01-02)