+++ Aditya Kumar Sharma [17/06/08 13:32 +0530]: >quite frankly i think its just plain stupid what all of you are doing, >this IMHO is like a group of five year old kids bragging how strong >their dog is, how big his teeth are, how furry his coat is, it seems >awfully important thing to do when you are five but when you grow up one >realizes that it was awfully stupid, because quite frankly nobody cares >about the other guys dog, each one to his own dog, or in this case >product, or choice of distribution, if a certain individual is being >paid by a company does not mean that he cant love their product, or tell >people about it,
I disagree. I believe that this is a valid discussion that Angad, Gora, Raju and Kenneth had, and if anything, it underlines the drive in the people behind this list to keep the list free of any kind of commercial influence. We have had these kind of discussions quite a few times in the last few years, and however negative the feeling was in the few days surrounding it, it has generally been good in the long term. And the list hasn't died in the process. Gora and Raj had concerns, Angad had his defense. People can draw their own conclusions. Let us move on. There are bigger issues to fight for. > now in this case i highly doubt angad is nothing but a >spokesperson for sun, who joins all possible mailing lists and then >brags about Solaris or OpenSolaris or a million other things that Sun There is no issue being evangelical about such product offering, but when you are being paid for evangelise a company's product, it is common courtesy(not just in FOSS lists) to put in a disclaimer that you are commercially associated with it. It is just like stock advisors putting in disclaimers that they own certain stock themselves. >system, i also love fedora, am a fedora ambassador, but lets say five >years down the line i am hired by either Apple or Red hat should i >suddenly stop talking about either of those amazing Operating systems, >it would probably by then would be my second nature to talk about such >things, if it already isn't! , As soon as you are hired by any of these companies, you should be aware of your changed role in this list. The ILUGD list is proud to be a vendor independent, non-commercial, grassroots FOSS community. Possibility of bias while offering suggestions, takes the shine off such an identity. It is just like talking face to face with people. If you talk while wearing the uniform of the company, people would have no objection to whatever suggestions you make, because they can evaluate possibilities of bias in their mind. But if you do the same thing without wearing the uniform,.... that is sneaky behavior. :) >of us here haven't let pass an opportunity to target him, and yes i am >not a regular contributor to the mailing list, and the reason to that is >quite simple, ILUG-D rarely welcomes new people, rarely approves of new >initiatives, when we , i was the one who sent in the proposal for a >FREED.in or even a satellite conference being hosted at our college >JIIT, sent in a proposal it was met with only skepticism , i accept that >we were new members, but someone could have said no worries we'll try >and integrate you, but nothing of that sort happened, Freed.in or any >such conference must be held at JNU is what i gather, the reasons for I don't think you completely understand how such FOSS lists work. There are no issues with new people coming in. There is just a bit of mild skepticism in new people turning in and trying to change things. If anything that this list has learnt over the last ~10 years is that it is easy to start things but more difficult to sustain things in the long run. The basic unwritten expectation that the list has from new people is for them to build some kind of credibility in the list first by regularly contributing to it. Your voice counts more and more as your contributions go up into the community. BTW, did you jump to all these conclusions about the nature of the list just because the ILUGD folks didn't warm up to your idea about hosting freed.in at your college? Do you believe in democratic opinion? What if most people involved in the discussion genuinely believed that JNU was a better venue? Were you open to that possibility? My advise is to warm up the list to your college by holding several monthly LUG meetings, etc. first, and then go ahead and proposing to have such conferences there. - Sandip -- Sandip Bhattacharya http://blog.sandipb.net _______________________________________________ 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/
