Now that's the worst kind of advocacy, fucking trolls that just like to start
shit.

-Good rant, Jeremy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: DCT Jared Smith [mailto:jared@dctkc.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 12:54 PM
> To: kclug@kclug.org
> Subject: Advocacy
>
>
> I was recently in a conversation about Linux advocacy
> with some Windows advocates. From my best guess, I would
> ken they were hoping to draw me into Windows advocacy,
> because they were very revealing of thoughts and concerns
> which I had no idea even existed. They expressed freely,
> as if I were one of them. Another guess would be that
> they simply _thought_ I was a secret Windows advocate, like
> they are. I am not. I mean, I didn't even know it was possible
> to 'advocate Windows,' not in the way I saw it happen
> in this conversation.
>
> I learned a lot, especially about how I've been going about
> OSS advocacy inefficiently.
>
> Now here is the thing. The revelation that people could be
> such stout advocates of Windows made me rethink some
> things. Indeed, as a result of this conversation, I realized
> that pretty much everyone who is not an overt OSS
> supporter _is_ a Windows supporter, or at least an
> interested lurker on that list :-).
>
> Paradigm shift, for me.
>
> It goes deep enough that, to these people, every single mention
> of Linux is seen as an arrogant jab, a condescending "I'm a
> supergeek since I know how to use Linux, and you don't, so
> you must be just a proletariat programmer." kind of statement.
> I discovered that without even mentioning Windows, mention
> of Linux chafes the Windows advocate.
>
> For the brief window of that single conversation, which I
> doubt will ever happen again, I got to see how Windows
> advocates talk in private about Linux advocates.
>
> It's surprisingly like the other way around, when Linux
> advocates talk about Windows. What is revealing (and
> previously invisible to me because I agree with the basic premise
> of Linux advocacy, but here I didn't agree) is that a great
> amount of the conversation is rhetoric designed to put the other
> side down.
>
> This I believe is an artificial way of lifting ourselves up.
> Now I understand how both sides do it.
>
> A more durable way of lifting ourselves up is to make one of
> the strengths of our advocacy our willingness to help
> others deal with their programming issues WITHOUT advocating
> anything. It's slower, but more sure, because this actively tears
> down walls, instead of building them up. In other words, let
> our actions and attitudes speak more than our words.
>
> Now this is what I believe. In the presence of a room full
> of Linux users, even then, it is wise to leave advocacy
> out of the conversation, because you never know when
> one of those users is dearly devoted to Windows, and rankles
> to hear Windows being slammed, which is exactly where I
> found myself the other day (in reverse).
>
> My point is that if we're going to get beyond Windows,
> we have to leave behind marketing techniques forged in
> competitiveness, which include FUD.
>
> I like competition. May the best man win. What I want
> to rise above is taunting.
>
> For example, at the same time as we who love and use Open
> Source Software speak with appreciation of its strengths,
> we must go out of our way to speak with understanding of
> the fact that those very strengths are seen as weaknesses
> to the people who love and use Windows.
>
> For example
>
> As I see it, Windows folks are primarily interested in making
> money, and for them, programming is simply a WAY to make
> money.
>
> Yet
>
> Linux folks are primarily interested in programming, and
> are delighted that they can make money at something they
> love.
>
> Thus, if you want to inspire a Windows person regarding
> OSS, it is silly to tell him 'it's free.' A Windows programmer
> hears the word free, and it's not inspiring. To him, it means
> overtime-without-pay. Yet the same verbiage makes a
> Linuxhead all degrees of happy. So it's okay to say it,
> but condition it with the fact that "in addition to being free,
> it's a way to make money, because it is inherently well-
> designed." Something to that effect...
>
> Here is another example, and I think it is a stroke of
> genius not understood about the genesis of Perl. When
> Perl was first implemented, Larry Wall was hesitant to
> start a whole discussion group about Perl, because he
> felt it would isolate people from each other. Instead, he
> began to seed the Unix discussion groups, as he writes,
> "very politely." When someone had a question that was
> solved well with Perl, he would answer the question
> without reference to Perl. Then, he would say "but if you
> want to do it even easier, here's how you could do it in
> Perl..." and give them the Perl answer.
>
> I think that was a very graceful way to introduce Perl.
> It took more work than bald advocacy.
>
> Here is a final example. In the long message to the kclug
> list from Jim Herrmann, he very briefly mentioned
> itdepends.com. He did not mention it in an advocacy
> sort of way, but simply as a matter of fact while talking
> about the details of spoofing MS Passport. Curious, and with
> a spare moment on my hands, I checked out itdepends.com,
> and found it to be ... well, it depends what I found it
> to be, but I found it to be precisely that. That form of
> advocacy is not artificial. It's the best kind. (But then
> again, 'best' implies there is a hierarchy, and thus a
> 'worst,' and maybe here I am drifting so far off my original
> point that I oughta wrap up this little advocacy of
> non-advocacy. :-))
>
> Perhaps you have already made this observation; to me,
> it is a new one.
>
> -Jared
>
>
>
>