To read the blog item last week by C|Net’s Matt Asay entitled “Open Source will win quietly,” you might think that a.) he is belittling our efforts in Felton and elsewhere and b.) he and I might disagree on how to get FOSS out to the general public.
Only Matt can answer item a., and on item b., I don’t think we’re in disagreement at all. We may be on different paths, perhaps, but our destination is the same.
Matt is right when he says that, “Open source won’t win through rallies and petitions. It will win as it becomes better and better, such that normal people want to use it.” I don’t know what “rallies and petitions” he speaks of — we certainly didn’t have that as a part of the Lindependence game plan (nor do is it part of the program going forward), nor has that ever been part of Lindependence’s modus operandi — and I agree that, as FOSS continues its march to improvement, people will realize it’s a viable alternative to proprietary software.
The key here is getting Linux and FOSS in front of people, introducing it with the help of those who know its intricacies, so people aren’t going blindly into terra incognita.
In his blog, Matt provides the perfect example of why Lindependence is necessary: Thanks to Matt, his Mom is now running Firefox as a browser.
This is great — no sarcasm here; I mean that — but bear in mind that not every mother has a son who’s a nationally recognized open source blogger, ready to convert family members to FOSS (further, I would like to think that Firefox is not the be-all and end-all of Mrs. Asay’s digital experience with open source).
So the niche — void, some might say — Lindependence fills is simple: Make GNU/Linux and FOSS available to those who seek to find out what we already know about digital choices — those, perhaps, who might not have digitally inclined relatives to help them along — and make this available in small groups; person to person, one at a time, in gatherings in towns small and large.
So how exactly does Lindependence deserve the sarcastic “Yahoo,” let alone the ivory-tower condenscening tone of the blog, Matt?
65 with the fog breaking on what’s turning out to be a nice morning
