[WFS-India] feedback on using the word "M$"

[A. Mani]

On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 11:30 PM, Aruna S <safincrazy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really doubt that. Most of them will assume that
> a)It's a typo
>
> or worse
>
> b) Not see your perspective of things.
>
> Unless we have happy and positive symbols associated with all the other free
> software names there, like PC-BSD (Somehow get a smiley face inside the D),
> we are really not getting your message across.
>
> When I mentioned that I'm suggesting this "out of personal experience", I
> meant that I have been guilty of demoting Windows to convert people to FOSS
> users. It has never worked as I thought it would. Either people meekly agree
> with me because they are ignorant and I sound smart for putting down
> something popular or they get really aggressive about the ease and
> simplicity of using Windows without ever having given GNU/Linux a try. I
> think both approaches are not what we want.


Basically it boils down to

1. We exclude M$ from the discourse

or

2. We permit free s/w to run in M$ windows in our event scenarios. In
this case we need to do lot more of support work.

A. The obvious problem is if we say free s/w runs in M$ os, then
newbie may never move to GNU/Linux.
There are examples of people never bothering to understand despite
sitting in the free s/w movement.

B. M$ can say that the free s/w runs in their OS and so their OS gets
weight in an adoption scenario.  This is very dangerous.
We should take care to denigrate the performance, usability, etc of
s/w in M$ os in this scenario and also make it it a point to mention
it to newbies.

C.  The difference between free s/w and open source needs to be
stressed. People looking at things from the business open source never
bother to contribute back and break the ecosystem.

So an additional course module with links to key resources is a must in case-2

Even for case-1 it should be available.

For the Git event, at least one mentor should handle all this.



Best

A. Mani


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A. Mani
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http://www.logicamani.in