Before the storm (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

Jono Bacon begins a series of articles on open source advocacy, on O'ReillyNet. "In recent years, Open Source has become a relevant and strangely addictive force in IT. As the Internet age has dominated businesses and consumers with the same well oiled, yet clunky machine, Open Source has crept out of the dimly lit bedrooms occupied by toiling hackers and into the network rooms and 'enterprise centric strategies' of todays businesses. Open Source has not just become more acceptable, it has become more relevant."

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Before the storm (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Dec 27, 2004 22:23 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Is is worth talking about "open source advocacy" any more, or is it like talking about "blue patch cable advocacy"? Maybe generalizations about "open source" are like the other side's "intellectual property destroyer" jibber-jabber -- just a distraction from selling the merits of individual project proposals, one customer at a time.

Before the storm (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Dec 28, 2004 10:39 UTC (Tue) by chaneau (subscriber, #6674) [Link]

Yes it is, because lots of non-technical people don't know anything about free software, I'm the IT manager for a local authority here in Belgium, since I took the job (for two years now), I have migrated, first the infrastructure and now the clients to Free Software alternatives (OpenOffice.org, Mozilla and co, Grass, Linux where possible (roughly 70% of the clients and all the servers), OpenBSD for the firewalls etc ...) and there is a lot of interest in my work from other local authorities.

But the main discourse these people are getting is from Microsoft and it's affiliates. So if you don't provide an other point of view, they just stick to what they know.

There are a lot of misperceptions also (Free software is too technical, the cost of migrating is huge, the users are lost etc...) all of which are provably false as long as you take the time to go out, meet these people and advocate.