Open Source Advocacy The Right Way

[vmlinuz] writes "With a rapid succession of people moving towards Open Source, advocacy and evangelism is increasingly important in helping organizations to move over. The O'Reilly Network has begun publishing a series of articles about Open Source by Jono Bacon that teaches how to approach advocacy sensibly and more productively." From the article: "Although Aristotle developed his message many, many years ago, the concept of optimizing how we talk to people has developed further throughout history. From Aristotle to Heraclitus to Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Keller to George Bernard Shaw, many people have advocated new thinking in times of rabid opposition."

Comments

Here's my take on it

[Wellington Primrose]

Linux needs to play to it's strength's, namely the fact that it uses mature development platforms for software, which leads to faster more secure applications.

Empirical evidence has shown, time and time again, that low level languages like C and Forth produce more efficient, faster, and easier to maintain code than today's so called high level languages. Why is this important? Because they (the IT world, who simply wants to sell you a new compiler every year for $2,000) try to push stuff like encapsulation and polymorphism down your throat as the saving grace and you simply accept it as fact because you don't know any better. If you're not bit shifting hot registers at runtime then you're not programming. Plain and simple. You're just plugging different blocks together and hoping like hell it will work. How would you feel if they designed bridges like that? I wouldn't feel too secure driving across a bridge that was designed like today's non open source software programs are.

Unless you see a speed increase of Olog(n) then you are simply wasting resources by using a high level language. The reason for this is simple, the amount of time spent in coding is finite, yet, oddly enough, CPU time isn't. Thusly unless you can improve an algorithm along that order then your time was wasted. This is simple first year college stuff here, hardly rocket science.

As Frankie L Brooks mentions in the seminal book The Mythical Man Month, cultural differences should be shunned, as they do not improve productivity, they only give one the impression that they do.

College prof's pimp the new stuff because that's how they keep their jobs. I've been a member of the IACP panel for the past 8 years and you should see how professor's eyes will glaze over when you start to question them in a scientific manner. They don't get that kind of stuff from their snot nosed freshman students, you can be sure. Demand some evidence from your profs when they throw this stuff at you, tell them you want to see some 3d pie charts and graphs to backup their claims.

Indeed, Linux/Open Source scores a vicoty by an order of magnitude over other platforms in this regard.

Re:GASP!

[MarkGriz]

Piss off! You don't know what you're talking about.

TROLL!!!

This is the same reason why Macs are so rare

[leereyno]

The only people who act more like rabid idiots than Linux/OSS advocates are Mac zealots. They are their own worst enemy, not to mention a bunch of bald face liars. With Linux/OSS there are valid technical merits and advantages that exist. With Macs this is not the case and has not been the case in well over a decade if not longer. Yet the true believers still persist in trying to con anyone who will listen into pouring their money in a hole in the ground by buying a Mac, and acting like petulant brats towards anyone who won't listen.

That being said, opposing something in the technology world because of the culture surrounding it, and not because of any concrete technical reason, is simply irrational. Linux and OSS are ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency, both of which inevitably lead to more $$$$$. Shunning them because some of the people who are behind them are unpalatable, just doesn't make sense.

Lee

the document snuck in!

[ximpul1]

just click start>run then type "cmd" (no quotes)

then

less /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Advocacy

(yes the windows part is in jest)