Kevin Anderson wrote: > Wow, my first post on this list in over a year, and I already started a > fight...
Well hell, I guess I started the fight but I'm happy to blame you if you're OK with taking it :) > Perhaps we can put it together. Kin can speak about FOSS, and tie into Totally. I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot here, but I'm just truly convinced that business owners are into the whole "what can you do for me now" rather than "what should my philosophical beliefs be". I don't have the stats on hand, but I think we can all acknowledge that most businesses in Calgary are so-called "small" businesses. The true value of FOSS is two-fold: what can it do for me now and what can it do for me in the future. Kin has an excellent topic for the "what can it do for me in the future" crowd, but there is no future without the now. And yes, that is a judgment on my part about the content of Kin's talk - I may be way out in left field here. The now is Scalix replacing Exchange. The now is Openoffice.org replacing MS Office. The now is Citadel vying for a Groupware position. The now is GIMP replacing Photoshop. These are all mature applications that can replace existing proprietary applications at 9am on Monday. The "future" is what adopting open formats does for the future and while this concept has supreme value, it is meaningless if there isn't anything we can use today. As ESR points out, the concept of future-proofing encompasses what happens to your data when the application developer or developers go tits-up. Perhaps that's actually an argument for Kin's presentation. I spoke with RMS one day for almost an hour and while I found his conviction to be admirable, I also found his views to be unrealistic. What the GNU project wants is total buy-in to a philosophy which is admirable but doesn't accurately reflect what business is based on. But by the same token I admire the fact that the GNU project identifies and pursues the "hot" applications that aren't available in FOSS such as a code editor, a compiler, Flash and God only knows what else. They are pragmatic in realizing that there is a "now". What I don't know is who is going to be at the Open House and that's where I think Kin and I fundamentally diverge. Our estimation of the audience are different. I feel that if we were to segment the "business" attendees they would be mostly small business which, by and large, are most interested in cost-savings at the moment (and the future later) . In which case we should hit them with the bullet that will slay them in the short time we have available. I doubt that we'll see any CEO , CIO, or any other executive types at the open house and therefore if we get any business-folk they will be those looking for short-term gain such as lead architects or network admins. That's why I think something like a Scalix presentation will serve us better. However, I cannot let any post by me go by without stating that I have not ante'd up and offered to present which means that I am but a voice from the bleachers. All of Kin, Kevin, and everyone else that is putting effort into this should be listened to long before me and congratulated for putting themselves in harm's way. They are putting up where it counts and kudos too all of you. J -- Key fingerprint: BDE0 DE52 B8C0 0CDF 7653 E5A2 D861 7877 0D3B 813E http://www.jonwatson.ca +1.403.770.2837 "Trying to learn to hack on a DOS or Windows machine or under MacOS is like trying to learn to dance while wearing a body cast" - ESR _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
