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Linux Advocacy From the Trenches
An anonymous reader writes "Tom Adelstein, longtime Linux advocate and consultant has spent the last year working closely with state, local, and federal government open source software initiatives. Tom launched Government Forge,spearheaded the Open Source bill in Texas and other programs. Tom shares the grass roots efforts that have offered him an insider's view of what is propelling Linux toward critical mass and the desktop. He shares his view of Linux "from the trenches" in this interview."
"The main PC makers have held back on releasing Linux desktops only because they're afraid of offending Microsoft"
It saddens the heart to on ponder on the technological advancements that have been missed because of this disgusting behaviour. And what is worse, is that many blindly idolise this company and it's unethical practises. Man the lifeboats or go down with the ship.
Does anybody miss the days when Unix was respected? Back in those days, if you ran Unix or a variant, men would tip their hats at you, people would call you "Sir", women would approach you instead of waiting to be approached, and no one would question the decisions you made.
Nowadays most any chump will try and recommend Windows, even if it's not the right solution to a problem, just because it's all they know and all they ever learnt. They don't have the uncertainty and fear of Ghod in their hearts like most people used to.
A crying shame.
If Microsoft can offer a better TCO
"Total cost of ownership" isn't the buzzword anymore. The new buzzword is "return on investment". Even if free software costs more to run, it can often do more.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The kernel, basic system and desktop (ala kde/gnome) is there and ready to go right now.
.. they have them too...
Open office is really darn close, Mozilla is dead on...
but... some things are lacking horribly...
Examples? Video editing.. nothing available for linux can touch adobe Premiere.. not even the old version 5.0 of it.
Desktop publishing? It's finally starting to get there with the one app we have.
but the biggest hold back is that unless you are a medium level linux user you CANNOT install software without a fight.
a newbie want to click on an install icon... like UT, quake3, or all the loki games has.. and Open Office and Mozilla
linux needs a unified installer system. it needs to be a click-and-drool GUI (command line capability though)
this is desperately needed and actually USED by the developers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Microsoft's defenders and supporters are almost always shills, corrupted, evil, immoral devils out to dominate the world.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Sun hardware? It's one thing to have great hardware, but at such prices...
...when at this very moment, the most important (IMHO) issue Linux faces is the very real threat of being rendered illegal via SCO?
Articles which trumpet how nice Linux is (and it IS nice for many things) are much like articles talking about how best to play DVDs under Linux-- they tend to ignore the frightening and (IMHO) immoral legalities surrounding such things. It is still illegal to play a (store-bought, DVD-encrypted... which means 99% of mainstream movies) DVD under Linux, as there is no licensed CSS decryptor for desktop Linux systems. And pretty soon, it may very well be illegal to use Linux without paying some outrageous "tax" to SCO. The fact that there are so many Linux advocates out there but the SCO fiasco is still going on (and no one pays attention to other Linux legalities, like the lack of a legal DVD player) is frightening. You or I might not care about the moronic decisions judges and congresspeople make, but I guarantee that businesses do. The greatest obstacle to the mainstream acceptance of Linux is not technical-- it's legal. (The second greatest obstacle is social... the gap between Linux development culture and "desktop user" culture. But that's another story for another day...)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I recommended that instead of going forward with the migration, that we educate users and build support internally first.
In response to perceived resistance, he decided to back off a bit and get "buy-in" from the people that actually would be using OpenOffice.org; IMO this was a smart move.
I cringe whenever I see rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth zealots - regardless of topic (OS, programming language, political party, etc. - spouting off and alienating the people they are trying to convert. Such zealots hurt the cause they are trying to help.
As an aside, I picture a modified logo and an advertisement for "A55 Hat Linux", a distro developed 'specially for the zealots...
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Our customers and support at other banks will not be happy if we start mailing them open office documents.
Then mail them RTF, which is a textual encoding of a Word document. OpenOffice.org Writer for Windows does a good job of exporting RTF. If they demand to receive .doc, send them RTF renamed as .doc; Microsoft Word will know how to handle it. Likewise, OOo Calc can export spreadsheets that Microsoft Excel can read just fine. The OOo filters are often even more reliable than Microsoft's own filters at reading Microsoft Office documents, especially damaged ones.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The problem is that OSS isn't even concidered during the bidding phase of procurement. It is not even given a chance to provide a TCO or ROI against companies, most notibly MS. If OSS was not being selected because there were specific requirements that it could not meet, then yes your post would be correct and we wouldn't have to do all this campaigning. We would just make a better product. But what is happening is all the middle management people, the ones who OK or sink a project/proposal, just flat out refuse to look at OSS. Their thinking is "No one was ever fired for buying MS", much like the old IBM saying back in the day. The only way to fight this is to hit them over the head with a clue-by-four, OR legally require them to look at ALL bidders, not just the proprietary ones like MS.
Space for rent, inquire within
Shortly after he started Bynari, she got a job working for them with their then business model of acting as a US support center for Mandrake. It looked like a good opportunity at the time, but it went sour pretty fast.
I spent some time talking to Tom and was shocked to find out he didn't apparently care all that much about OSS. He mostly cared about finding ways to make money off it. He was positively giddy when describing to me various turnkey vendors he was talking to who were building net appliances (consumer firewalls, etc.) which ran GNU/Linux but were themselves closed systems. They were pretty upfront when talking to investors that they were able to do this legally by making sure all of their mods were routed through kernel modules which were written in such a way they could stay proprietary. A lot of big vendors do this without trouble, it was more these guys' attitude that they were so clever for getting a free ride on Linux this way. It disgusted me.
Anyway, Adelstein continually was trying to change Bynari's business model to find something that would make the big money. He reminds me of nothing so much as the Loki top brass fiasco stories or the Caldera/SCO stuff. He loves to talk himself up and position himself as a big name Linux consultant, but in my experience cares very little about software freedom for it's own sake or has any kind of deep technical understanding of what's even going on.
But then maybe I'm just bitter because he fired my wife less than a week after finding out she was pregnant (draw your own conclusions), based on (foundless and unsupported) claims that she had been actively working to impair and destroy their systems. Then he refused to pay us the moving expenses he owed us until we got lawyers involved and reached a settlement. A few months after that was over we got contacted by the former Bynari CIO who had been fired after Tom reportedly claimed he was selling company secrets to the Japanese. I really tried to lose track of him after that.
I am sitting in the middle of large information-centric US agency right now and I concur: OSS is adopted here very slowly.
I have been plugging in OSS solutions for long time but most of the time they look at me like I am an idiot. It appears that problem is there is not a single recognizable vendor behind OSS products. Apache, Tomcat even JBoss have no chance at the moment. There are big bucks involved and large "traditional" vendors are like sharks circling around government contracts.
I think OSS and government are a natural fit but I am not sure how glass ceiling can be broken. If anyone has experience pushing OSS to US government, please share.
The government is no different from any large bureaucratic organization, like a Fortune 500 company. Tons of developers and IT people using Linux everywhere because they don't have to get umpteen budgetary approvals to take an old Pentium machine, throw it into the corner and make it a departmental or development server. Lots of Free Software behind the scenes everywhere that's supported internally.
Sure, more advocacy is needed by large shops like IBM of their Linux work so that large bureaucratic organizations (governments included) don't have to shamefully keep their Linux servers hidden away and can freely admit when a project uses Free Software. But this still isn't going to go anywhere toward getting Linux on the desktop.
I think the initial adoption of Windows on the desktop largely happened in corporations first and then overflowed into home use. But these days, I don't think it's that simple. I'm not convinced you can sell organizations on making a change to something that users aren't familiar with due to massive retraining costs (or at least the fear thereof) in the modern office, where Word, Powerpoint and so on are kind. I think you have to pursue the home audience first, where you can sell people on cost, features, reliability. Of course, you have to have a winning case before you can do that, and Linux doesn't really have that yet for the desktop.
If pigs can fly, then the government should buy them instead of bombers. But pigs can't fly, and MS generally can't offer a lower TCO. Just think about the cost of the viruses. Then think about the cost of keeping MS's high profit margins and high growth rates going, year after year. MS simply can't compete on cost, except in pathological cases.
Their current procurement procedures require that, in order for a product to be considered, SOMEONE must submit a bid. If we are talking about implementing a system with hardware, software and services, then bidders can put together a package which includes Libre software. If we are talking about buying 300 copies of MS Office for the helpdesk guys to install, who's going to submit a bid proposing to supply Openoffice free, instead?
The process assumes that money will be spent, and that vendors will be willing to jump through many expensive hoops to get fat contracts.
Finally, we have the fact that for many RFP's, the primary objective is to SPEND THE MONEY! Getting something in return is secondary to using up the budget, so that next year's budget is bigger rather than smaller. Free or Libre solutions aren't an obvious solution to this problem, especially if they have lower TCO! Managers know this, and are careful to write their specs so that they can spend what they have their hearts set on spending, and get what they want, rather than the best tool for the job.
Managers who purchase large systems from companies like MS or Oracle can count on being visited, flattered, lunched on expense accounts, given offers of political kickbacks[1], and whatever else it takes to make a sale. Managers who implement a low-cost, Libre solution can count on a smaller budget for software purchases next year, and nobody will make them feel important, or even buy them a sandwich at Subway.
The government's job is not to interfere with the market by promoting one product over another.
Then why is it appropriate to have our current procurement procedure, which effectively locks out most free and Libre offerings? The current system certainly promotes proprietary solutions at the expense of all other possibilities.
[1]Remember the big scandal of Oracle's big sale to California?
See what I've been reading.
When I started out, I'd ask for help and people would say read the man pages. I didn't know what man pages were. Was Linux really that gay? I laugh when I think about that now. I discovered that you'd never get an answer to a problem from Linux Gurus by asking. You have to troll in order for someone to help you with a Linux problem.
For example, I didn't know how to find files by contents and the man pages were way too confusing. What did I do? I knew from experience that if I just asked, I'd be told to read the man pages even though it was too hard for me. Instead, I did what works. Trolling. By stating that Linux sucked because it was so hard to find a file compared to Windows, I got every self-described Linux Guru around the world coming to my aid. They gave me examples after examples of different ways to do it. All this in order to prove to everyone that Linux was better.
So if you're starting out Linux, I advise you to use the same method as I did to get help. Start the sentence with "Linux is gay because it can't do XXX like Windows can". You will have PhDs running to tell you how to solve your problems.
Finally, we have the fact that for many RFP's, the primary objective is to SPEND THE MONEY!"
(1. and 2. are the value added part
And most importantly: don't forget to reward the hard working developers, the FSF, etc. with (tax deductable?) donations.
Then it's Guinness time! (WATMHL)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
apt-get and Synaptic are absolutely fabulous apps for those of us who are experienced using Linux and installing software for it. However, they fail to help newbies because the process they use to get and install software does not map to the way the newbie thinks about installing software. And anyone who says "The way the newbie thinks is wrong" is simply failing to understand newbies at all.
Now that I've made a generalization, let's have a specific run-through of the problem. I have first-hand experience with switching (some successfully, some not) a number of Windows users to Linux, and here is the problem that they all run into. (NOTE: I ran into this very same problem when I first switched, but I knew no one who could hold my hand through it all. The only reasons I am still using Linux are that I am far more intelligent than most people, so I am better at figuring things out on my own, and I am also incredibly stubborn when it comes to learning something new.)
You are Joe Newbie. You've got your nice shiny Linux system running. You hear about a great app called "FooBar". You like what you hear about it and you decide you want to try it. You search google for it, and go to www.foobar-software.org. You try to download it. But you can only get source or an RPM or DEB package. (Let's assume your friend set you up with Libranet and for some reason you actually know that it's a Debian based distro -- a stretch in its own right) You download the DEB, but you run into dependency conflicts. It wouldn't be so bad if this happened once or twice, but it happens for bloody near every app you try to install.
Now all seasoned Debian users, as well as most users of other distros, will be screaming at you to use apt-get or synaptic, or whatever other package management system. But that's the problem. People accustomed to Windows or Mac are accustomed to going to a store or a vendor's web site and getting the software they want. They have no idea that their computer might somehow "magically" know how to get it for them. Heck, if you didn't know better, why would you think your system would know how to do that? Even when you show them how apt-get works, they still often forget and revert back to the old way. It's a very deeply ingrained habit that only the most persistent learn to break.
To make things worse, even Debian, with a repository probably more exhaustive than any other distro's, still doesn't have all of the packages (and new versions of packages) that a user wants. If that user is a newbie, having to remember multiple methods for acquiring software and knowing when to use each is a further strain.
Granted, if a person sticks with Linux and becomes more accustomed to it, he or she will probably learn how to use apt-get (or insert package management system here) to streamline the package-acquisition process. However, it would be in open source's best interests to try to minimize culture shock so as to further help bring more people in.
So the grandparent poster was dead-on. For example, Mozilla really does get it. Their installer is distro-agnostic and installs everything that the package needs. Even though this may introduce more bloat (redundant packages) for any given distro, it also results in an easy installation for a newbie. Advanced users will know how to get better versions of Mozilla specifically for their distros, but newbies will still be able to participate by getting Mozilla the way they know best.
All end-user focused software packages should follow Mozilla's example of providing a simple executable installer which contains all libraries and files needed to run the software independently of most, if not all, other packages on the system. This certainly isn't the ideal setup from a sysadmin or advanced user standpoint, but it is needed to match the way newbies think about installing software.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Many advocates seem to confuse OSS with organized religion. Ironically, they disparage religion for its belief system and how it limits your life, but then they turn around make statements like "Keep yourself pure -- don't install Windows XP for Half Life 2!!" I'm sure I'm not the only one that laughed when I saw "keep yourself pure."
It's an operating system, people. Not a way of life, or a higher moral standard, or any of that. Some of us just see it as a component of life, not the reason to tell others about it.
When I see people evangelizing Linux, I can't help but feel like they are REALLY missing the point. Linux in and of itself is a wonderful accomplishment, but its not for everyone. This is completely intentional. The Linux community and advocates thrive on not being mainstream. The feeling that you are 'oppressed' (or whatever term you want to mistakenly apply) is that which keeps the fervor high in the zealots.
This displays two of the problems of widespread desktop linux acceptance:
-- There are so many alternatives that it is hard and frightening for managers to pick one. Sounds silly, but Microsoft offers, for better or for worse, a de-facto standard on many fronts. Picking a linux, an open office-like suite, etc. introduces a huge set of choices which are perceived to have been already made.
-- Dippy analogies like the above. Youngest aunt, indeed.
I can appreciate the parent posters frustration (I started in 1996), but his technique lacks a lot of integrity. Just because members of a community act abusively doesn't mean that your best approach should be to act abusively as well.
But, more importantly, this RTFM! (Read The Fucking Manual!) trend is dying out. More and more I hear people taking an interest in helping other people, and that's probably a direct result of new users who (unlike our poster) instead of reacting aggressively to the old RTFM'er reacted by doing their best to support the next generation of new users so they didn't have the same experience.
Today's Linux user is a different animal.
Quack, quack.
What's holding linux back? The linux community has a long heritage (starting with it's predecessor, unix) of devaluing graphical user interfaces in specific and usability in general.
Isn't it odd we keep asking ourselves what stands in desktop linux's path when we all know where the unix people stood in 1984.
A community that places no worth in non-technical people being able to get stuff done with a minimum of fuss has lost the battle for the desktop before it ever started fighting it. Every time I hear someone in the linux technical community refer to GUI's as 'click-and-drool', it is painfully clear to me as why linux is getting its asked kicked by an incompetant bunch of fools from Redmond Washington.
I think desktops using a linux kernel will be so much better and more successful once the unix folks are shut out of the GUI design process. We let the programmers design algorithms, and we let'em design precious little else.
Ergonomica Auctorita
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Sadly, the guy's trying to sell his only product, himself. Anyone believe that someone other than Adelstein is responsible for this /. submission?
The governmentforge site was created two months ago has no FAQ of its own, no downloads, and is virtually devoid of content. The Leopard site was created last month and is likewise empty of any useful content. One interesting facet: it states "Project Requirements posted 17August 2004 at Sourceforge" so I guess he can travel into the future too. Maybe he's already visited the future, seen that he will develop no software and has given up; that would explain the lack of content.
Anyway, none of his sites has anything that wouldn't be revealed by a Google search and they all are missing a lot. They're just trivial pages of links to OSS.
We expect people to be able to read because written language is an integral part of our economy. If you are not able to read, you can easily be legally tricked into signing a contract that turns over all of your assets.
Computer technology is reaching that same level of integration within our economy. Your typical users doesn't know what a firewall is, yet at the same time they are unknowlingly exposing themselves to financial risk.
Yes, there is a certain level of specialization within our society, however understanding computer technology is much closer to literacy at a highschool level than knowing how to build a house or even how to drive (depending on where you live).
However, the most important reason that everyone should be expected to understand a great deal about computer technology is that is an extremely powerful tool of both democracy and of oppression. The thin line that divides the two correlates directly to how knowledgable the public is about the technology.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!