(I am following up to this message, but including responses to another of your messages. This has already become rather a mountain out of a molehill as far as I am concerned.)
On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:01:38 +0530 "Angad Singh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 9:51 AM, Raj Mathur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hmm, not sure I agree with that. I see the issues at hand as being (a) > > gratuitously pushing a product/service/group that has no relevance in > > the current context and > a) In http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/msg21486.html, > there was a recommendation made by Mr. Gora for other linux distros, without > giving any reason to back his views, and so did I for opensolaris. What is > not in context here? > b) In http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/msg21510.html, > there was a show of concern for creating awareness for opensource and so I > mentioned about our program and what it does to fulfill that purpose! How are either of these equivalent to the message I was complaining about, namely http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/msg21512.html That sounds like a marketing blurb, adds little of value to people on this list, is a complete non-sequitur to the thread that it follows up on, and is blatant astroturfing, at least by my reading of it. Microsoft has been roundly condemned for such behaviour by its campus ambassadors, and I do not see why other companies should get a free pass. I spent some time composing my original message, making sure to (i) cast it as a request, and based on personal opinion, rather than as a formal declaration on behalf of ILUG-D, and (ii) not impute any motive to you, other than pointing out an obvious conflict of interest. It is quite possible to promote a product that one has a vested interest in, but such promotion should be based on technical merit, and lack of disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is seriously unethical. If you honestly do not see the difference between your message, and either of your (a), and (b) examples above, I guess that we will just have to agree to disagree. For the record, (a) was a one-line jocular follow-up, is by no means representative of my participation on this list, hardly constitutes a promotion of any specific Linux distribution, and in any case I do not derive any financial benefit from promoting any Linux distribution. (b) This is slightly more ambiguous, but not by a lot. The forwarded message does not specifically promote a proprietary product, but is cast as an open source (Linux) success story, and, if you will notice, the author starts out by declaring that he works for HCL (full disclosure). And, please drop your us against them attitude. For example, other people have called out Ubuntu folk when they marginally crossed the line on the list, so this is not about you per se, but about what is acceptable on the list. > (b) not clearly specifying that you get paid > > for peddling that item, whatever it is. And if the latest > > (proprietary) > > > Proprietary??? > > I don't know why and how people are so uninformed here! [...] I don't know why you are seemingly purposefully ignoring the essence of the point, namely, *your* failure to disclose a potential conflict of interest. Look, Angad, I am all in favour of people like you making a bigger contribution to this list, ILUG-D, and Freed.in. Yes, in spite of the name, we are primarily about FOSS, and not about Linux. I am also quite prepared to believe that we do not do a good enough job of welcoming new entrants. However, there are certain things that I for one will not compromise on, and as far as this thread goes, I absolutely do not see it as an example of unfriendliness from the side of ILUG-D. Please feel free to disregard the remainder of this message, as this thread is already turning into the equivalent of "But, daddy! He started it first!" I am certainly unlikely to follow up further on this part of the conversation. Coming back to JIIT as the venue for Freed.in 2008, I hope that you do not dispute the following facts (a) that the ILUG-D meeting at JIIT (which for us was a test case) was quite disappointing in terms of attendance. There were 2 students from JIIT, out of your claim of a 100+ strength of the JIIT LUG. And, this after the meeting was rescheduled at your request. (b) After that, besides email, you were contacted at least a couple of times on the phone personally by me. Those requests included asking for JIIT faculty to contact us, and/or asking for contact information so that we could get hold of them. Neither of these materialised. (c) However valid the reasons might be, I think that balancing commitments that you have made is your problem. Even if you were pre-occupied with exams at that time, we had exactly zero follow-ups from you after the exams. You can choose to believe me, or not, but besides maybe Andrew, I was the biggest proponent of a satellite conference at JIIT. However, once it was mid-Nov. 2007, and we had to plan an event with international speakers for Feb. 2008, we had no choice but to cut our losses vis-a-vis JIIT. In spite of the above, you seem to have the unmitigated gall to claim that somehow *we* fell down on the job by not involving you? Let me contrast your attitude of entitlement to that of the students at RKGIT, Ghaziabad, who ran a real local LUG of their own, took the trouble to travel to ILUG-D meetings in Delhi, withstood much harsher criticism at times, and as a consequence have been an integral part of ILUG-D, and the Freed.in team since at least 2007. Sadly, none of them are campus ambassadors of any kind. Maybe, there is a lesson in that. 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/
