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Optimizing Linux Advocacy Efforts
An anonymous reader writes "Open source advocate Tony Stanco, of the George Washington University Cyberspace Policy Institute has been getting flamed for allowing Microsoft reps to speak at an Open Source in government conference he's putting on next month. Today, in a commentary on NewsForge, Tony responds to the flamers. He says, "Leave it to the kooks in the community to make Microsoft look sympathetic." Is he right? Should we be willing to listen to what Microsoft has to say? Aren't open minds important to open source?" Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
we should totally be open to listening to alternative points of view, but is an open source conference really the proper venue for it?
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
MS would LOVE to polarize the argument here.. give governments and companies a clear definite black and white choice, then demonize the hell out of the opposition.
Of course the kids looking for the quick +5 will jump on the anti-MS bandwagon in a hurry, the fundamentalist linux zealots will rush in to bash MS like a kid facing off in his first at-bat in tee-ball, but they're just serving MS purpose of polarizing the choices available....
If the Open Source community is so convinced of Microsoft's villany and non-worth, allow them to speak on their own behalf. People need to come to their own conclusions about this matter, or they'll never truly reconcile themselves to the fact that Open Source is a truly good thing, possibly even superior to Microsoft's offerings. Wouldn't it be better for the OS movement to win in a forum of free discussion, than to say, "This is MY point of view, and it's the right one. No, I won't let you speak and defend yourself, because I'm right." How childish does that seem?
In Other Words, whenever they ( or anyone else ) deploys FUD, bogus-reasoning, ignore-the-important -to- concentrate-on-whatever-we-say-is-'urgent', etc. we clue-in to what ignorance-commitment's doing, AND attack the method of ignorance-committing as-it-happens.
Behold:
Essence-of-integrity is the ultimate weapon.
( actually, from the buddhist AND from the nagual perspective, this is a key-method of mind-survival )
Messages to/for me ( in me journal )
Cheers,
Jeremy
I was at OOPSLA and attended lectures by a number of people from MicroSoft. I even saw Bill's keynote.
In general, the MicroSoft techies know their stuff and are confident. I'd definitely listen to one of them speak.
On the other hand, if the people showing up are in any way marketers, I'd not be bothered listening to them.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"I am not sure of the best method to get this view across. But Microsoft and other non-free software developers deserve protests wherever they have an event." What, EVERY software developer that produces software for a profit is now the enemy? Statements like this show the open source community needs to clean its own house before trying to take on the rest of the world. Open source is a wonderful thing, but this statement smacks of socialist paranoia. You beat them by offering up a better product, not by shouting "Capitalism is wrong".
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Microsoft is a company that sells software (which is with small and niggly exceptions source-secret software), employs a bunch of people (most of whom probably are not *actually* the devil), is run as a public corporation (which adds lots of bureaucratic, buck-shifting fun to the mix), and -- all else aside, just for a moment -- has had a big a role in lowering the cost of personal computing as any other company or group. Microsoft's desktop software (things like Office, etc), whatever you think of it, represents much better value than was available not many years ago. Partly that's because there *wasn't* any such thing as certain pieces of software that are now available to run on Windows.
:)
You may agree with me that source secrecy is a big snag in whether you should want to pay for or use a particular piece of software, or you may say "If it works, who cares whether the source is there?" And no one can make that decision for you.
My biggest problem with Microsoft is related to that though -- my beef is that they end up as a money sink for a *lot* of money taken from the public in the form of taxes, and which is supposed to be spent in a way that maximizes public good. That's the whole justification for taxes in the first place. I can think of no way that "the public good" is better served by buying software which is as license-crippled as Microsoft's than by financing (and financing modifications if need be) the development of open source software. I happen to like the GPL, but the BSD license (or similar) is what I'd like to see on state-funded software; anyone who'd like can spin off a GPL version, no harm / no foul. The FSF should have a bot that checks when new tax-funded software is released, and issues a GPL'd version, posts it to a web site
If you say to this stance "Ha! Why should the government be in the software development business?" note that the government already *is* in this business, only they're currently financing software in a way that does not make it very available to the public. That's "The Public."
I've said before and still believe that Microsoft *could* become the world's largest open source vendor, and still make a lot of money at it. IBM's approach shows that boxed software is not the only way to make money, and (the other side of the coin) being confident enough to work with open software is a selling point.
History is still happening; I wonder what Microsoft would do if the Federal government made source code disclosure (one scenario would be that source code disclosure be disclosed, but only after a specified time spent in escrow) a requirement of software purchases, for both security auditing and general-welfare reasons.
That sounds quixotic, but it's what they should do.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
It started when Rubin Safir (the founder of NYLXS) heard about the eGov conference and the fact that MS would be speaking. As the flame continued, Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman, and myself all chimed in.
The majority of the people on the list want to forbid MS from speaking _at_all_costs_.
Basically, they don't like the idea of letting Microsoft talk, and then rebutting MS's arguments via a following speaker and a Q&A session. They say it just gives MS more floor time, which is bad. They have a point, but people will hear MS's FUD, and I would rather people heard it and then heard it debunked. In other words, if MS is going to say anything at all about open source, I want it on _our_ terms and in _our_ forums, not theirs.
---
"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
We all know Microsoft has done a lot of criminal activity, so why should it surprise you that:
a) We continue to look at the negatives
b) There should still be so many negatives
This seems only natural to me. Let Microsoft have it's praise where it is due. Most people think, for example, that their Office software is actually quite good. I don't often see a slashdotter claiming the contrary.