[wellylug] No subject, or thoughts on advocacy.

Richard richard at redspider.co.nz
Wed Apr 14 17:22:59 NZST 2004


I'm a best-tool-for-the-job guy myself, but I'm under no illusion that it is this very fact that makes my use of open source software all the more an act of advocacy. A Free software obsessive is easy to dismiss because they'd use Free software no matter how bad the stuff was.

Best-tool'ers, as many of the people on this list are, are much harder to
dismiss. They use Free software because, as they see it, it's the best solution.
They have all the choices before them, an they chose this. No marketting firm
could ask for better stuff to work with than that.

Linus himself is known for that kind of practicality, and when I talk to people
it is his example which is far more compelling than ESRs rants (no offense, the
guy has done some neat stuff, but I find his attitude disturbing).

So the question is not whether this is an open source advocacy group. Too late.
The question is whether you lead by example or by rhetoric. Quite frankly I'm
all for example and it appears to me from many of these messages that through
the smoke, that's what most people are after as well. Its just that we all have
different experiences which make our "best tool" choices somewhat different.

There is only one weakness in the "best-tool" method of doing things, and that
is a lack of experimentation. A key component for a personal best-tool choice is
always how well you know the application concerned, and it is this that often
stops us from finding better tools to work with.

As a Linux users group, I think we're already fulfilling our advocacy role,
although some people will naturally want to back the ideology more. The more
important thing is to maintain an open mind to more options. Too many people are
trapped in Windows or OS9 or Solaris or indeed Linux simply because they are
unwilling to open themselves to further options. Would you use OpenBSD if you
had a high-security problem to solve?

And this is why we run into problems, because as with everyones experience being
different, Jamies choice of moving from Linux to Windows on the desktop is a
personal choice. It has to be. Standing up and saying "hear ye hear ye linux is
not ready for the desktop" is pointless, some of us have been running Linux
desktops since we left Workbench 1.3, and find them vastly more effective and
useful than Windows XP. Similarly saying "All ye sinners BEWARE, use Windows
and thou shalt be struck down" is rediculous, I can't read my eBook without
using Windows, and I can't play Battlefield without using Windows, and I'll be
damned if any ideological stance about software is going to get in the way of
me enjoying myself in my rare free time. I have a life to live.

When I use Linux, when I talk about Linux to others, when I run apt-get install
and people ooooh, I am doing advocacy in the best way possible, in the *human*
way, acknowledging that all things have faults but showing that it is possible
and even easy to use these things to achieve great results.

When I damn people for being unwilling to change, or assume them stupid for
their choices, all I do is make enemies needlessly. If Linux is truely the best
thing since sliced bread, everyone will end up using Linux in the end *anyway*,
it requires no shouting on street corners and sing-alongs. Its not like beta-max
where it might lose out due to iron-grained standards or interoperability
problems, the computing field is too vast for standards to truely impact on such
things. Even if the fabled evil DRM-in-hardware came in and locked us out of the
DRM-enabled desktop market, there'd still be plenty of people using Linux on the
desktop and not giving a damn (me included).

For the geeky amoung you..

--What if we all don't believe what you believe?
--My beliefs do not require you to.

There's a saying, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, is
still there". If the open source model is truely as good as we think it is, it
doesn't need our devotion. People understand these things intuitively, which is
why marketing has ever been about keeping advertisements grounded. If someone
says "its the best there is ever ever!" we just don't believe them, and their
word has no weight anymore.

So lets leave off with the rants and ultimatums and get back to what we do best,
using the best tools for the job, and know that we need to keep open minds and
keep *trying* things, because otherwise our best-tool status will grow old.

That's why I'm on this list anyway, to listen to what other people are trying
and then try them myself, and to tell other people about the things I've tried,
so that they can try them if they wish.

-- 
Richard Clark,
Analysis and Design,
Red Spider (http://redspider.co.nz/)
(+64) 021 478 219




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