MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-02-10 |
| FROM | Dave Williams
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Re: out of the bag
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I think I may have found a loophole in the description of the event you
provided to Richard Stallman:
"[T]he presentation of best practices, awareness raising, and the
sharing of experiences among policy makers, government officials,
users/consumers, universities, and industry specialists in Open Source,
e-Government and related fields from the U.S. and Europe."
The key word is "related" -- one can arguably make the case that Shared
Source is a related field. A good lawyer could run with that,
naturally.
What I find troubling is the lack of analysis. If you accept the
premise that Microsoft regards Open Source (forget Free Software for a
moment) as a competitor to their business model then their behavior begs
some analysis. Sure, other companies such as Sun Microsystems may be in
competition with Open Source, but for the time being limit the argument
to Microsoft.
Now put yourself in their position. How would you counter this threat?
Actively criticizing it? Already done, and the results weren't
favorable. Now what? How about confusing the issue? If you agree that
no publicity is bad publicity, show up at any event that discusses
software licensing. Open Source already has a lot of attention, so
ignoring it doesn't work. Even if you lose every debate, your name is
still circulating in connection to the opposite camp's public
statements.
As far as politics are concerned, it isn't a fair fight. Microsoft gets
to discuss Shared Source with government representatives all over the
world, without the balancing presence of an Open Source advocate in the
room. Mr. Perens has done an exceptional job of accessing the Halls of
Power, but he can't be everywhere. And if he were in the room at the
same time, he can't guarantee a big pile of campaign contributions in
the form of checks written to the maximum amount allowed an individual
by law.
So imagine a conference with people from all over the world discussing
Open Source in government exclusively. The Europeans could feel good
about their current levels of participation, and say, "I can't wait for
these guys to deliver even more kick-ass (arse/culo/derriere) products,
so that we can convert our infrastructure completely." The Local, State
and Federal low-level employees (i.e. the ones who do all the work)
could say, "This is some great ammunition to bring to the boss the next
time he's being blindsided with expensive solutions. It ain't much, but
maybe someday I'll have more influence in this process."
There is no need to engage Microsoft at all in that scenario. Mr.
Stanco made some comment about gold only becoming more refined in a
fire. I suggest that we refrain from starting unnecessary fires; let
Microsoft issue the challenges and let them lose publicly at their own
forums. The "fire" of our own making should be the crucible of
implementing a Free/Open solution and letting the results speak for
themselves. Except of course at a conference where people share their
experiences and investigate additional possibilities. The conference
could in turn lead to more opportunities. I haven't read Sun Tzu's "The
Art of War", but I'm sure he had something insightful to say on the
subject.
I'm reminded of the Desktop Linux Summit. Mr Perens withdrew because of
unilateral moves by the summit's main sponsor. As it happens those
moves were also self-aggrandizing, but the sponsor (Lindows) justified
them because they were footing the bill. So be it -- Bruce elected
instead to help start a new Desktop consortium. Well, here we have a
policy institute that may be hijacking Open Source for the advancement
of their own public profile (or some other reason). Mr. Perens could
withdraw due to these inappropriate decisions, and then decide to start
an organization dedicated to Open ... uh, never mind.
- Dave
On Mon, 2003-02-10 at 09:05, David Sugar wrote:
> 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.
____________________________
New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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