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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."
Being a geek that hasn't showered in a week, constantly rambling about "Evil Micro$oft" isn't a good way to advocate OSS?
What about yelling First Post????
*Leans over podium*
Brethern, it is the time of the Apocalypse!
Stand up and be saved!
*Thumps loudly on "Linux in a Nutshell"*
Who is ready to receive saaaaalvation?!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I preach to you the Superlinux! Windows is something that must be surpassed. Thus spake Zarathustra.
You mean that calmly and rationally pointing out the benefits of something accomplishes more that foaming-at-the-mouth, in-your-face, mine-is-the-One-True-Way evangelism?
Nah, can't be. If things really worked that way, just think of all the time thats been wasted...
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
..the advantages of using open source software. Because I don't have to pay Windows licensing fees, I have to spend less time working, and can spend more time with my girlfriend, and more time lifting weights. People always ask me why my relationship is so successful, or how I had time to tone my body, and I just say "I use Open Source Software."
> 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.
How's that? So it's actually better to manually malloc and free memory than to let a GC take care of it? Surely you're just jesting!
As someone who's currently wrapping the Evolution C API in Ruby, I can assure you that writing Ruby code is much easier than writing the corresponding C code.
I'm not sure why this would be considered a "Linux strength",. since all the good high level languages - Ruby, Python, Perl, etc - all run on Linux, also.
The Army reading list
The reason higher-level languages are used is because man-power is more expensive than CPU-power.
.NET or whatever, then that's the way companies will go with software. The thing is that if it's not out there, it's not bringing in anything.
.NET any day, but it's not about preference, or 1337 skillz, or good programming conduct. It's about the bottom-line.
If it's easier, and cheaper, to plug blocks together using Java,
I prefer C and Perl over Java and
Sorry, but campaigns claiming that windows is cheaper than linux, based on MS-sponsored biased reports, are indeed FUD. FUD is when you conveniently ignore reality and depend on gullibility and marketing instead. TFA talks about how linux should do advocacy the Right Way, which avoid fanboy-dom and reverse FUD.
Really, we could write articles about how MS should sell its software as a superiour product, but they seem to feel the need to bash the competition instead ("only communists use open source!").
Now, I think the problem really is that the "High Level Languages" make people think that they are programmers when they are not. People who have not developed the skill necessary to write good code in any language can jump in and produce results. Those results might be low par and hard to maintain but they have been produced, and that is what the folks with the money want. They don't care that the code is sloppy and poorly designed. They just see the program working. Later on down the road they might care when they have to spend double the money to maintain the beast. But that is for another day.
So I excitedly downloaded and burned some Mandrake 9.1 CDs, installed (amazingly painless), and entered this whole new world of Linux and Open Source.
There are many ways you could describe my reaction to the yawning gulf between expectation and reality: "furious backlash" would be one; "blind seething rage and betrayal" would be another. The catalogue of disasters and frustrations that followed left me cursing the names of the people who recommended Linux to me as this wonderful cure-all and utterly *hating* Linux with every fibre of my being. I actually stuck with it for a few more days and, after deciding that linux was the most pointless project I had ever had the misfortune of dabbling with, returned to the comparatively hassle-free bosom of Windows.
Luckily for me, the story didn't end there and some persistent and random lockups in Windows led me to re-install Linux (Mandrake 10, this time around) to see whether it was hardware or driver related (a dodgy fan on my graphics card, for what it's worth). This time around, with my expectations greatly lowered (in fact, by this stage, Linux had improved unrecognisably, and I was very pleased with its progress), I fell head-over-heels in love and haven't had Windows installed since.
But it could so easily have gone the other way; it is hard to explain just how much the hype followed by disappointment soured me on Linux at the time (an understatement!) and it is my firm belief that if I had been forewarned about the things that I could do in Windows but not in Linux, I would not have reacted so sharply. So now, when "recommending" Linux to the curious, I usually start with a list of negatives (some hardware may not work; you may not be able to run your favourite games; don't expect installation of software to follow the Windows model, or you'll be in a world of hurt) before extolling its non-pragmatic virtues ("It's an operating system with love in it!"). It's heartening that quite a few people are still willing to give it a shot even after hearing my litany of gloom :)
So in a nutshell, don't be a blind fanboy, or you will be Open Source's worst enemy; let people know that there will be concessions to make, but that many people still feel the switch is worth it. Make a special point of mentioning just how different and customisable it can be (show them a variety of WMs, from the absurdly minimalist (Ratpoision) to the wonderfully glitzy (Enlightenment) - this diversity and difference from the comparative homogeniety of Windows usually gets people curious, in my experience). Don't oversell it, as this is just a recipe for disaster.
Oh, and this post mainly deals with the casual home PC user, so might be a little off-topic - apologies for that :)
People care about advocacy because computers, especially now that so many are interconnected, exhibit a strong network effect. The more people who use a given OS or architecture or whatever, the more likely developers will write programs for it and the more likely that costs will drop from economies of scale. Peripheral vendors and ISPs will support the most common configurations possible. That means if you want your life to have fewer computer hassles, you're better off recommending that others use OSes and such similar to the one you use -- otherwise you'll buy scanners that are unsupported, and your ISP won't give you tech support and if you need an obscure piece of software you might not be able to find it.
People do need to worry, at least somewhat, about what other people are doing, because what other people are doing usually affects the people observing, at least to some degree.
The individual is a part of a larger web, and the vibrations you send from your tiny part of the (metaphorical) web travel through it in ways not always perceived by you.
WRONG:
The #1 product in the market sucks. The company that makes it is evil. This free software you never heard of is the best. It is written collectively by hippies. Everything should be free, including YOUR products.
RIGHT:
The #1 selling product in the market is not the best in the market. If we implement [Linux, etc.], it will be CHEAPER, it will be MORE SECURE, it will produce LESS DOWNTIME, it is EASIER TO UPGRADE, you will increase your PROFITS by reducing costs.