Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sneaking Open Source Software Through the Front Door

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the son-why-does-my-browser-have-tabs? dept.

the_1000th_Monkey writes "LWN daily pointed out this new project today. It aims to be 'a compilation of high quality open source software (OSS) [that] will be made available as a CD distribution in order to help promote OSS to users of Windows and MacOS.' There are hopes that this would make it easier to encourage universities, OEMS, and your parents/friends to take advantage of this software and eventually bring them over to a completely free system on their own time. Help for suggestions/discussion is being sought." Newsforge is carrying a slightly more in-depth look at this project. Anyone care to design some attractive, downloadable CD-graphic images?

1 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. What it takes by saphena · · Score: 4, Informative

    For the vast bulk of "ordinary" users the computer is just a thing they switch on and it "just works".

    They use M$ Windows cos that's what it came with, that's what everyone else uses and, in business at least, that's the platform targeted by the mainstream application developers.

    They use M$ Office and M$ Outlook and M$ Internet Explorer cos that's what it came with, that's what everyone else uses and they get email attachments and website downloads that presume the existence of this platform.

    These people usually have little, if any, computer literacy, They have little, if any, awareness of the "politics" of the open source argument. The overwhelming majority will have no understanding of or use for the source at all.

    If you want to change their habits, you won't succeed by selling the operating system. "What's an operating system and why would I care about it?"

    If you want to change their habits, you won't succeed by trying to change everything all at once or by selling the virtues of "open source".

    If you want to change their habits, you won't succeed by giving them a CD full of strangely named things that they have to "compile" or "make" or learn howto use a plain text editor to configure.

    Pick one thing, say OpenOffice, make sure that it is idiot proof with an idiot proof install routine. List ALL its virtues and, particularly, why anyone would want to use it in preference to M$ Office that they're all used to.

    That might do it.