On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 3:27 PM, Gora Mohanty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> With all due respect, and speaking only for myself, please stop your > constant astroturfing for Sun Microsystems. Not that Sun is not doing > good things in open source, but as your major contribution in this > newsgroup seems to be to keep bringing up the name of Sun and/or > OpenSolaris I am extremely sorry that i have created such an impression that I have been 'astroturfing' for Sun Microsystems on this list, though it was never my intention to do so. With all due respect, you've associated my speaking once (in total) about trying out OpenSolaris with my mentioning of being a Sun Campus Ambassador as an indicator of me doing some kind of a marketing for my company (or whatever, that's just down-right sick IMHO). I admit that I have been a mere 'lurker' on this list for a very long time, but that is due to the sheer reason that I did not find any topics of interest to contribute my input and my previous experience here. Excuse me for being so blunt and frank myself (you deserve this now anyway), but frankly speaking, I find that ILUG-D doesn't function very well as what it is supposed to be - 'a LUG', and it is pretends to be much more. Many times in the past, I've seen that everyone starts pulling each other's hair for stupid issues. I am sorry but I did not find it a very healthy and open community at all. It would be better if I don't speak more on that, but I mention this, since it has been one of the primary barriers of participation, atleast for me, and I believe, others. Now that you've spoken up so bluntly, I wouldn't stop myself to tell about my experiences with ILUG-D to the entire list as well. We started off with our college linux club last year, we did a few meetings with workshops on using FOSS tools, and a few installfests and the like. My connection with ILUG-D started when one of my seniors' friend Gaurav Mishra contacted us to conduct a talk by ILUG-D at our college. I was thrilled to hear this and welcomed the request. I wasn't a sun campus ambassador back then. I was just leading the linux club at my college. Unfortunately Gaurav wasn't able to organize that talk (not being his fault at all), but someone called me up at the last moment, 1 day before the talk was scheduled and was kind enough to save us from the embarrassment after the publicity we had done about the event. That's when I had met some enthusiastic folks like Gaurav, Triveni, etc. and we planned on any future collaboration of our college LUG with ILUG-D. Back then, ILUGD was promoting Freed.in and Gaurav and I setup a bus trip taking 60 students from our college to Freed. The students loved it, it was a first time experience for them, and it increased awareness about open source, and at the same time it helped Freed get some participation. That particular Freed took place at JNU and we were very excited about it, so we thought why not try to have the next Freed at JIIT. I understood that JIIT would have to be closer to ILUG-D for that to happen so when there was a mail sent out at the list asking for a venue for the next monthly meet, I had sent a request to the mailing list that we would love if the meeting took place at our college and it got accepted. ILUG-D had it's October, 2007 meeting at our campus. We discussed the prospects of having the next Freed at JIIT. Dr. Andrew suggested having a satellite conference at first. Niyam and others on the list suggested that we should learn, test and hold a mashup event first instead of jumping to the main Freed event directly. We totally agreed. We sent a formal proposal with details about our campus facilities, events, etc that our linux club has been organizing.etc. Mr. Gora then asked us to make a presentation detailing all the facilities, we as a college can provide for Freed. For some unavoidable reasons, we were unable to come for the following meeting (which was announced on the short notice of only a few days) since we had our exams coming up. So we apologized to the list and requested to show our presentation at the next meeting, but then afterwards, it all really became a very sorry affair. We were ignored and denounced (for those interested may go back and read the archives). That was most discouraging. Few people saw how you were treating us and contacted us off list to help organize such an event without ILUGD's support. From then onwards, I didn't ever feel like participating. Recently, I gained a lot of interest in OpenSolaris and (made a big mistake) to mention one line about it in reply to a discussion on the list. I forgot the stringent view of a few people who manage this community. I should have known that my speaking of OpenSolaris will be taken in the most negative and narrow-minded way and will be spoken of as 'astroturfing for the company that pays you'. For what it's worth, Sun doesn't give me any extra compensation to speak about OpenSolaris in public mailing lists (or any other down-market ideas you might have had). I just got attached to OpenSolaris while learning it, and promoting it in my college as part of my role of being a sun campus ambassador. Just at the wrong place at the wrong time I guess. I replied to this mail and as I have a strong feeling what Sun is doing with the campus ambassador program for open source was worth mentioning here, is very relevant to the topic of conducting awareness programs and knowledge sharing sessions in colleges and schools for open source software. I posted because I feel proud to be a CA, and I feel proud to be part of this program, and thought would let people know about it (far from any feeling of embarassment). And Yes, Sun pays me for being a CA, to evangelize its technologies, but not for loving open source. 'Sun Clubs' have the 'Sun' in their name just because they are sponsored by Sun, not that they only promote sun technologies. We promote Linux. We promote Firefox. We promote Drupal, and whatever else we like. We promote Open Source in general, giving due credit to our sponsors by giving some light to their projects (which too are free and open!). Mr. Gora, pardon me being so frank (and the tone in which I speak). but I feel sorry for you! -Angad Singh , and in light of your (presumably remunerated) position > as Sun campus ambassador, this is a conflict of interest, and plainly > embarrassing, in my opinion. > > Regards, > Gora > > _______________________________________________ > 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/ > _______________________________________________ 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/
