Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 23:24:59 +0800 From: Doug Lo <jwlo@ms11.hinet.net> To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FS advocacy. Message-ID: <353622CA.322EF822@ms11.hinet.net>
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Hi, FreeBSDers,
The following letter is my teacher sent me the mail that he has a plan
about using Free OS' replaced M$ in Taiwan.
Would anyone give us some comments or suggestions, thanks in advance.
Best regards,
Doug Lo.
--------- forward message ------------------------------
Now let's talk about promoting free software in general. Let me put
my conclusions upfront: writing articles to educate people seems more
desperately needed than writing programs to do this and that.
Point one: FS don't have to replace M$ entirely in one shot.
FS are already used in many corporates. Many of the links which I
showed you and many included in my web pages give examples of
successful Linux application in business env. I bet you can also find
a lot of places using FreeBSD in more demanding situations. However,
I strongly suspect that even in these corporates, there are at least
a few M$ windows running Word or PowerPoint, just for the sake of
communicating with the rest of the world. It is relatively easy to
persuade technical people to use FS in server type situations. On
the other hand, it is painfully agonizing even trying to explain to
the general public that they should choose rtf or html instead of
using Word's proprietary file format when saving files, let alone
asking them to learn a new word processor. If we can forego the
subgoals of converting people from using some of the M$ applications,
the task would be much easier. That is, it will be much cost-effective
(in terms of our effort) and nonetheless a triumph if we concentrate
on converting large corporates to use FS for the most part, leaving
Wintels to the end users only for word processing, etc.
Point two: Most of consumers are blindly lead by the biased
propaganda; we need to provide them with other sources of information.
IMO, the lack of Chinese word processor is much less a problem than
the lack of world-wide FS information translated into Chinese. A few
years ago, FS was not popularly recognized even in USA -- few corporate
people knew their existence, and those who did thought it was only
for hackers. The situation has changed lately, and facts about FS have
spread into corporate users in many countries. However, (in consistence
with what you pointed out regarding how to find Visual Tcl/Tk), we
don't have that information floating around in Taiwan. The majority
are locked inside the Chinese Web communities, which provide some
technical info about FS but hardly any _arguments_ why FS are better.
On the other hand, the main stream media, computer mags, and even
government organizations like Έκ΅¦·| or several conference organizers
promote the use of proprietary technologies through ads, hypes, required
submission file formats, computer education opportunities,... etc. The
public fall prey to the mis-information of the propaganda, and, to
the agony of the informed, mistook popularity for open standards.
In recognition of these two observations, I propose a few ways in
which to direct our efforts more fruitfully. Simply put, let's provide
objective information to the real technical people and to the completely
uninformed, and let's use the propaganda to revoke the mis-information
previously planted in the know-half population's brains.
1. For those of us already working in the Information Technology
departments in large corporates, we can convince technical
and English-literate people to compare FS with proprietary software
objectively by referring them to foreign web sites which provide
info rectifying the mis-information in Taiwan. I would particularly
recommend:
http://slashdot.org/
http://www.eklektix.com/lwn/
http://www.opensource.org/
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.essential.org/antitrust/microsoft/
http://www0.vcnet.com/bms/
Feel free to add your list of sites promoting FreeBSD or whichever
FS, but let's keep it from growing indefinitely by insisting that
the listed sites should provide news, perspectives, success stories,
political issues rather than technical how-to's. Once the techies
are willing to give up the prejudice and willing to give it a try,
it's a relatively easy task to provide them with further information.
2. For the more adventurous of us, we should really go ahead and start
a business using FS. This serves more than individual economical
interest. It serves to demonstrate the true advantages of FS by
success stories. Let me with a few ideas:
a. Internet Cafe: With the release of Netscape Communicator as almost
FS, it's even easier now to set up an Internet Cafe completely
based on FS. If you can persuade customers to run many lynx
processes along with one Communicator process, the readers'
throughput gain would be one selling point not found in current
Internet Cafe's.
b. Using and distributing math-learning tools in cram school: RLaB is
a nice tool for learning linear algebra; GNUplot nice for learning
calculus; recently there was also an announcement of a FS almost
compatible with SAS or SPSS. Most of these are cross-platform, and
therefore cram school can use free OS's at work to reduce hardware
expenditure (e.g. out-dated 486s) while encouraging students to
install their own Windows versions. Used as learning tools, they
serve their own purposes and will cause little complaint about the
mis-issue of popularity.
c. Community Internet service/teaching center: a good population
which are not yet on-line probably won't care how
to use word processors and other hype apps. They will probably
be willing to try when told that the 386 their grandchildren
deserted in the corner can be turned into an internet machine
with little cost. If we target our objectives clearly as providing
Internet services alone, the customers might be attracted simply
because they can get on-line accounts, education, installation and
maintenance services from the same neighbor's home located at only
at a few buildings away. We may then give their grandchildren cool
games like Doom and LinCity as a bonus :-) Seriously, this kind
of business has the prospect of growing into a tech support
company
but can live on before that kind of market matures.
3. For the more altruistic of us, we can share the benefits of FS with
the less fortunate people in the charities such as orphanage.
Sometimes I found the null price becomes a hindrance rather than a
help
in selling FS to the corporate. (More on this later.) The charities,
on
the other hand, will perhaps appreciate better the null pirce and the
low demand on hardware. The less fortunate will probably also be more
open to alternatives which the general public refuse to try out of
sheer habit. If we explain objectively the pros of FS's long term
return (opportunities to learn the concepts and skills) vs the cons
(needing to learn a bit more GUI stuffs not found in FS but
immediately
needed in the job market), we might get some determined souls to
start an otherwise impossible journey. To begin with, they had
nothing
to lose. We may also point out to them the small business
possibilities
in (2) as another incentive.
4. For the more out-spoken of us, we should definitely write/translate
a lot of articles arguing why FS are better and submit them to the
press, put them on the web, and pass them around in as many ways and
forms as possible. I would emphatically like to single out one most
important technical issue: to educate people on the difference
between
popularity and open standards, and advocate the use of standard file
formats and interface protocols as corporate standard. This would be
a first step away from the M$ grip and a step towards objective
comparison among alternative programs (and hence towards better
acceptance of FS due to their technical excellence). In terms of the
presentation style, my (not-yet-rich) experience suggests that the
contents have to be tailored towards specific audience in order to
gain better acceptance. We know that FS are surely better for
individuals and for the society as a whole from many perspectives.
However, sometimes it pays not to emphasize certain advantages of FS
when advocating it to certain audience. A case in point is the
corporate IT managers. Telling them that FS does not cost money seems
only to make them look down upon FS as having no technical support.
I would advocate instead, that use of FS give them more choices to
spend their money on competing sources of technical support since
the source codes are available.
Sincerely yours,
C.K.Hung
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