MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-02-10 |
| FROM | David Sugar
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Re: out of the bag
|
Actually, I think if this and other conferences were simply to follow your
"three step program", and I thought that was excellantly phrased by you
yesterday, then that would be sufficient. It is a shame that they did not
choose to quote that as well.
I have heard Bruce's comments that we should do absolutely nothing in regards
to Microsoft participation at events out of fear of looking bad, and in all
fairness, this was suggested and accepted as common wisdom by many. I simply
feel it is wrong. When dealing with a bully, appeasement and pacifity never
works. It simply invites further abuse. I will be in Prague next month, and
there is an excellant place to ask what happens when one appeases a bully.
It is as true today as it was in '38.
I am sure that Microsoft started appearing at events because their marketing
people originally hoped to percipitate the kind of response that people had
feared would happen. However, out of fear of that happening, the community
failed to respond at all. Since we failed to produce any kind of response,
even an appropriate and measured one which should have been done long ago, it
is clear they now see that as weekness and the opportunity for further abuse
as demonstrated by their proposed mis-use of this latest conference.
Hopefully we can move past the do-nothing era of passivity and find
appropriate ways to respond as a community. It's long overdue.
On Monday 10 February 2003 08:29, Dave Williams wrote:
> It would appear that NewsForge has decide to run with the story,
> including direct quotes from yourself, Richard, Bruce and Ruben, lifted
> directly from the mailing lists.
>
> http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/02/09/2138247
>
> Included is a link to Tony's organization, of which Bruce is a
> participating member.
>
> Perhaps Tony can change the title of the conference to:
>
> "Various Source Availability Methods in Electronic Government"
>
> or eGovOS/SS/CS -- Open, Shared and Closed, in other words.
>
> Otherwise Mr. Stanco, Esq. and the Cyber Security Policy & Research
> organization could contact Microsoft and return their check, refund
> their application fee, reprint the brochures, offer an apology, and
> invite them to attend as regular members of the public. In fact they
> could say "You are more than welcome to ask difficult and probing
> questions during the Q&A sessions after a forum. You don't even have to
> represent yourselves as MS employees -- you can confront us as members
> of the public!"
>
> Sure, it would be fun to see a headline in the Post that says "Open
> Source representatives successfully defend their position against
> Microsoft", but if the headline were missing the last two words it would
> still sound good.
>
> Those who profess knowledge of the secret inner workings of Federal
> politics may be smarter than we know. Imagine if they actually want a
> Fair Use protest! Mr. Stanco could be sitting at his desk, fingers
> tented, and in his best Montgomery Burns voice say, "Yes, we'll make the
> Microsoft people look like fools on the inside and the extremists look
> silly on the outside! Then the government will realize we're the
> natural choice to deal with -- rational, agreeable people. Excellent!"
>
> - Dave
>
> ____________________________
> New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
> Fair Use -
> because it's either fair use or useless....
____________________________
New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
|
|
