MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-03-22 |
| FROM | Ruben I Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Article in text
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Responsible Leadership: Tony Stanco's Egov-OS problem
New Yorkers for Fair Use (http://fairuse.nylxs.com), costumed as the
American Founding Fathers, left the warm comfort of our homes at 4AM on
March 17th, 2003, and headed down to Washington DC, in full regalia, in
our 15 person passenger van, to George Washington University. The
purpose of our trip was to protest the mismanagement of the EGOV-OS
conference held there from March 17th to March 19th.
The central problem which has galvanized New Yorkers for Fair Use is the
increasingly negligent means by which Free Software and open source
advocates have been putting together marketing conferences for Free
Software businesses. EGOV-OS was a conference which was supposed to
market and advocate the use of Free Software and Open Source software in
all levels of government, national, local and even internation. The
conference had the potential to open up a stubbornly closed potential
market with the federal government and all around the world, by laying
out the legal, moral and practical foundation for the use of Free
Software products in everyday government. Instead, the conference was
turned into a photo opportunity and platform for misinfomation by the
Microsoft organization. This is the inevitable result when a 40 billion
dollar corperation which has made every effort to destroy Free Software
at it's root is invited to make a presentation in such a venue. And as
expected, Microsoft didn't let their shareholders down. Most of the
only press that came out of this conference was on Microsoft's 'Shared
Source'. Microsoft's money has brought them deep loyalty in the tech
press. In a conference with little press coverage, "E-Week" ran a full
article on Microsoft's misdirections under the headline "Microsoft's
Matusow: No Right Way to Create Softwar" which does eveything it can to
blurr the issue between Free Software's advantages and the closed
anti-competitive methods used by the Redmond based company. All of this
is fodder for the next 100 million dollar mailing to every CTO in the
nation. All of this takes food off the table of our Free Software
developer community, as well as the consulant industry which has been
built up to support Free Software products. Worse, their presence comes
at the direct expense of people who sell Free Software for a living, and
who can make clear, unadulterated messages from the use of Free Software
to the uninitiated.
Bad Leadership: Right Advocacy
When New Yorkers for Fair Use first became alerted to the problems
occuring at the EGOV-OS conference, it was through the mailing list of
NYLXS and was building on our experience at this years Linux World Expo
in New York City. At the Expo, NYLXS member and Bayonne lead
programmer, David Suger, had made a point to voice his concern that his
product won a second place award for Best System Integration Software,
second to Microsoft: for Services for Unix 3.0. That Friday after the
show, NYLXS had its annual dinner with 'The Linux Journal' editor, Don
Marti. We talked about the award and its implications to our
membership. Something didn't seem right, but Don seemed to have had a
reasonable explanation for the turn of events. NY Fair Use had an
impromtu discussion on this matter and the rumblings coming from SCO
which seemed to indicate that it might be ready to sue the GNU/Linux
community for Unix patents. We decided there to keep an eye on upcoming
developments on both fronts. And not more than a few days later, David
Sugar is emailing the list about problems with Microsoft presenting at
egov-OS.
We quickly had a board, cross mailing list vigorous discussion on the
problem which included most of the Washington DC area groups, many
people from California, members of the Free Software Foundation, NY Fair
Use, GNU Enterprise, The Open Office Marketing List, several interested
reporters, NYLUG, and eventually, Bruce Perens who is on the egov-OS
oversite committee. As a result, I had found my mailbox filled with
hundreds of private emails from people across the east coast
volunteering to protest against Microsoft at the conference. NY Fair
Use had a private discussion about the situation, and we decided that
the last thing we wanted was an unweildy demonstration in front of
hundreds of government officials looking at Free Software for the first
time. However, we needed to reverse this trend of Microsoft being given
a free public relations boast at the expense of genuine Free Software
developers and advocates at venues designed to highlight our own goods.
In the end, we decided that NY Fair Use is most effective when we have a
tight message, with a small and effective group. We turned down most
calls for a broad and raucus protest. Instead, we planned a smaller
event. As it was, if everyone showed up for our protest who wanted to,
we would have out numbered the participants at the conference.
But still, we had to answer the question of how to attrack attention,
raise the issue, putting the Free Software 'leaders' on notice that we
were watching, and still not turn the conference completely upside down.
The answer NY Fair Use came up with was exciting, fun and useful.
Fortunately we have associates who work on Broadway. They hooked us up
with costume designers who dressed us up as Colonial American's circa
1776. Suddenly everything came together, and NY Fair Use was ready to
move in a constructive manner.
The core of the New Yorkers for Fair Use action was Joe Grastara, Dave
Williams, Cesar Vargus, Sunny Dubby, Tim Wilcox, Ruben Safir, Marco
Scoffier, Vincenzo and Ray Connolly. Dave Williams and Joe Grastara
helped us construct an effective concreate message which eventually
became our pamphlet. Ray arrainged for transportation, and drove both
ways, for over 12 hours. Cesar, Sunny, Ray, Tim and Ruben dressed as
Founding fathers. Marco and Vinnie helped everyone get ready and dress.
And the entire enterprise was unwritten, as always with NY Fair Use, by
NYLXS.
Most of us met in Brooklyn and stayed overnight at Ruben's home where an
installfeast was going on from the previous day until 4AM. Ray, as the
driver got several hours sleep while the rest of us got final
preperations was made. At 4AM, NY Fair Use embarked on the trip to
Washington. We arrived safely at 9:30 in the morning, fully dressed in
costumes and ready to make our case.
Reaching our Audience: Confronting Hostile Guards
On arriving to George Washignton University, the apperance of 7 highly
decorated American heros astonished people. Picture bulbs flashed all
around us and after we picked up our badges and began to hand out our
pamphlet, people started to flow out of the main auditorium and colapsed
on us, inquiring about what we were handing out. We brought about 400
pamphlets, which all but a dozen where given out. Each NY Fair Use
member became a center of attention. We managed to talk personally with
nearly every member of the conference accept for Brady Kuhn, who refused
to talk to any of us for some reason. Our pamphlet strongly condemded
the organizers of the conference for not representing us, the Free
Software Community, adequately, and for caving in to self interests over
the good for the community by giving Microsoft a free public relations
opportunity to blur issues and to promote their 'Share Source'
disinformation campaign.
The conference itself, while filled with luminaries from the
international Free Software Community, overall was limited in its
attendence. At the time we were there, no more than 750 people were
attending the meeting, although the numbers might have been more like
300. However, the limited numbers meant that NY Fair Use was able to
contact nearly every event participant personally. We had nearly 100%
penetration of conference participants, both atendees and speakers.
Many of us spent several minutes talking to individuals. I personally
had the pleasure of speaking about 20 minutes with European Union
Minster Philip Aigrain, who I met in Bourdeux France this year about the
problem. In addition I spent a few minutes talking to Georg Greve of
the European FSF, David Axmark of MySQL who attended the NYLXS dinner,
Sara Brown from Public Knowledge among many others whose name I failed
to get. The same was true for all the members. At one point, early in
the giving out of pamphlets, the guards came through. Searching for the
leader of the protest, they approached me and asked where the leader
was. I waved him off and he became very anoyed. He asked me my name,
so I smiled and said "George... like in Washington and your in my
University". I spotted the reporter Grant Gross and I said, "Look
Grant, their throwing us out of here". Grant took out his notepad, and
the press cameras gathered around. The result was that the guard backed
off and confered with Tony Stanco. At this point, they decided it was
better to let us procede then face the bad press.
A few minutes later Tony Stanco seeked me out to talk to me. And later
Bruce Perens introduced himself. I spent a couple of minutes with Mr.
Stanco. Mr. Stanco asked me if I got everything I wanted out of this.
I told him I'll know in a few months if Microsoft is still getting a
free ride in the Open Source community to push their wares. Mr Stanco
reassured me that what we were doing was OK. Having his approval was
not reassuring. But I told him it wasn't our intention to have a blood
letting. Our purpose is to get a message across to the leadership of
what we needed from them and what standards we hold them to. Mr Stanco
then pointed to the crowd, and said, "You see these people, you'll never
get through to them with screeming and yelling." I said, "Maybe, it
depends on the need. In this case, we don't need to screem. In another
situation, a louder voice might be needed." Mr Stanco then said, "Have
you ever heard Microsoft talk. Their going to be the best promoters of
Free Software when they open their mouths." I reiterated my points.
Microsofts presense at the EgovOS conference takes attention from other
more deserving individuals. Mr Stanco refused to recognized the
problems he created. He also failed to understand that this was part of
a broader trends that the community faces with the increasing
encroackment of Microsoft and venues designed to sell Free Software to
the public.
The public deserves better.
By 2:00PM, we had essentially talked to everyone we could at the
conference. We'd made a lot of contacts, and in addition to handing out
pamphlets, members handed out literature about their own offerings for
Government and business. In fact, we took about 30 folders for the Free
Software Chamber of Commerce, the local New York Free Software
consultants network. All the folders were handed out. We had a long
discussion with the head of Hewitt Packard reseach in Europe, who was
very upset with us because he believed we opposed the commercialization
of Free Software in general. So we spent some time explaining how this
was not the case, and how we were only upset that our leadership was
giving Microsoft a free pass to the Free Software movement before making
them contribute to the community.
Repeatedly over time, people have asked why NY Fair Use discriminates
against Microsoft in it's eire. But NY Fair Use makes no such
determination. Our approach to Microsoft is the same as it would be for
any company which would warn CTO's to get their legal teams to
investigate the GPL closely before implementing any Free Software (as if
a standard Microsoft License would withstand real legal scrutinty), they
further publish detrimental lies such as this from the current Microsoft
website:
The GPL is designed to prevent commercial development of software
distributed under the license. It does this largely by requiring
licensees to make available, at little or no cost, the entire source
code for any program that incorporates any amount of GPL code. Given
that requirement, commercial developers cannot recover their research
and development investments by charging reasonable and appropriate fees
for their original software if it uses any GPL code. Free-software
developers have every right to pursue this anti-commercial objective.
Microsoft's concern is the resulting degradation of the software
ecosystem that would be triggered by widespread acceptance of the GPL,
particularly within the governmental and academic research sectors. This
ecosystem has sustained unparalleled innovation throughout the industry
for the past quarter-century. The principal role of government and
universities in the ecosystem is to undertake basic research and to
dispense the findings both into the societal base of technical knowledge
and to private enterprises and individuals capable of developing these
innovations commercially. Commercial enterprises, in turn, engage in
applied research to develop products that advance the state of
technology, generating jobs, profits and tax revenues that boost the
economy (funding additional basic research in the process). Commercial
enterprises also disseminate innovations directly into the larger
technical-knowledge base.
In addition Microsoft used their licensing to twart Free Software
products like SAMBA such as when they banned companies from releasing
their CIFS products under the GPL, or when they participate in a huge
Digital Rights Management scam which can end pratical use of Free
Software through their Pladium 'trusted computing' platform.
In the end, it's not so much Microsoft we are upset with in this
instance. Here we are mad at people like Tony Stanco who would
discriminate against Free Software developers and distributers for their
own personal ambition. And we let them know it.
As a footnote, after our trip to George Washington University, NY Fair
Use made a trip to Capitial Hill while dressed in our costumes. And we
got big smiles all along the halls of Congress, especially at
Congressman Wieners office, who is sitting on the sub-comittee on
intellectual property and the internet. We have a handshake to install
a GNU/Linux system in their office, so stay tuned....
--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
__________________________
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS http://fairuse.nylxs.com
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.inns.net <-- Happy Clients
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and
articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown
Brooklyn....
1-718-382-0585
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
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