I've snipped Anton's message coz I'm not replying to the individual
points, just the gist, which is that Saturday's RadioNZ "Digital Life"
programme [1] about Open Source was disappointing.
Despite "reasonably major errors" (which there were - they made me
cringe as well), I was not disappointed.
The item was _way_ better than I expected, considering how little time
they had for it (15 to 20 minutes, I'd guess), and who the target
audience was. It wasn't aimed at "us".
It was aimed at vaguely tech-savvy people who have little or no idea
what Free / Open Source software is all about. There's no way to explain
that in 20 minutes - much less the lowdown on GNU, Linux, GNU/Linux, et
al. Considering that, I think they did a fine job.
I have a couple of friends who feel pretty comfortable with computers
(using MacOSX and Windows), but seem to have the idea that I'm doing
something "cheap and nasty" by running GNU. (When I mention that I
donate US$10/month to fsf.org, they just go "blibble" and that's that.)
But guess what. One of those friends listens to RadioNZ regularly. So do
thousands of people like him. Programmes like this week's Digital Life,
whether they're 100% accurate or not, are _positive_. Nothing much is
going to sink in, just the general idea. Nobody's going to ditch
proprietary software after listening to a programme like that. But they
are going to start getting the message that Free / OSS is perfectly
acceptable. And _that_ is an excellent thing. We're not going to get
anywhere if people don't trust Free / Open Source software.
Soooo... even though I'm the sort of git who spells it "GNU/Linux", or
even just "GNU" (that's the OS I run, Linux or not), ... I was not
unhappy with Digital Life's item.
[1] I think the programme plays again Wednesday, after the 8pm news.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/digitallife/
Regards,
Tim
--
Timothy Musson - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~trmusson/
. . .!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
