Janani Gopalakrishnan wrote: Who had the stalls next to Microsoft at LinuxAsia? Did they > use it well? (Apologies, I couldn't attend LA as I was busy getting married, > so somebody who attended please throw light on this!!)
I don't know about who was next to M$'s stall, I know who was there opposite to it - it was us NRCFOSS. ;) so, now wasn't this a platform to > show Vista and Red Hat/SUSE/BOSS or whatever distro you place your bet on > right next to it... on both sides of Microsoft's booth... so, the users > could have seen with their own eyes that Linux and OSS work just as well as > the Microsoft products they are so used to? > Why should some one put up a stall and show people about Vista - they have already (tried) seen it, and most of them came back to *pirated* windows XP. I personally dont believe in comparing GNU/Linux with Windows or even Mac. Some may argue that for an *end user* its all same, no they are not. Similar eye candies don't make them similar. > Rather than expect everybody to understand, absorb and live by the > principles of free and open source right in the beginning, first show them > the produce! Show them that Linux and FOSS works not only for the geek but > for the desktop user too, show them it works for businesses, show them it > works just as well as what M$ sells. They will understand that Linux is 'free as in free beer' if they have bought their Windows for money. In a world where pirated stuff is common, we need philosophy more. > Makes me wonder... M$ dared to bravely step into alien turf (well knowing > that most attendees at LA are going to be Linux followers and not Microsoft > fans... think, if somebody stood in front of the Microsoft stall and loudly > argued with the rep there about the merits of Linux, how many people do you > think would have objected... now, that's a hazard M$ could have faced), but > we hesitate to give them a small place to stand in our ground? Nope. 1. In an Linux or OSS conference, you expect OSS products to be displayed. Not something which every one had been seeing it for years, having pirated copies in their homes. 2. They were tagged as 'Interoperability' partners and what people expected from them was some display of the same. Nobody expected Vista over there (though every one know thats all they can display in a M$ stall), including me. 3. We were too tempted to know what 'interoperability' they meant were all about, so we went to the M$ stall and enquired what they were having there for display on a Linux conference. The answer was "we have a presentation running, you can see that." On the other hand, other stalls like Collabnet, Spike Source, Turbo Linux, etc were kind enough to explain in detail about their product, answer all queries and even open to some criticisms. The people posted at the M$ stall were not techies and were not even able to tell what they had displayed in their stall. We dont expect the reply "check the power point presentation" when some one eager enough to know something about their presence approaches. 4. Some (around 10) students, who were interacting in our stall, did ask me what M$ was doing in a Linux Conference and whether M$ had any Linux or Open Source products being displayed ? 5. We, all those who from the community has been talking against M$ participation in LA, are people who attend most of the other FOSS conferences. We think that FOSS conference is a place where we get introduced to, or improve our knowledge about FOSS. Where we can socialize within our community and where new endeavors begin. For that matter, foss.in was far better place for the FOSS community and if it is true that M$ really wanted to display their product in a Linux/FOSS Conference, it should have been Foss.in rather as there were more stalls for FOSS products and where a major portion of the community was present as well as many non-Indian FOSS Developers as well. -- With Regards Parthan (TechnoFreak) . A Proud GNU/Linux User and Ubuntero .0. ..0 [Web] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Parthan 000 [Blog]http://technofreakatchennai.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
