Open source Aussies: Not poor, bearded loners
,----[ Quote ]
| Responses from 327 participants were included in the details revealed from
| the online study, which aimed to dispel the myth that open source supporters
| are invariably bearded geeks, male and impoverished, company co-founder Jeff
| Waugh said.
|
| "There are certain perceptions of the community that are somewhat
| inaccurate," he commented. The survey was sponsored by Fujitsu, IBM and
| NICTA.
|
| Facial hair growth wasn't captured by the questions, but the survey still
| showed a gender imbalance with only seven percent of respondents being
| female. However, notions of poverty seem somewhat misplaced.
`----
http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Open-source-Aussies-Not-poor-bearded-loners/0,339028227,339285610,00.htm
Related:
Kernel Summit: customer panel and group photo
,----[ Quote ]
| Also, for all readers, [it] is the obligatory group photo, available in
| medium resolution, full resolution, and full resolution annotated forms.
`----
http://lwn.net/Articles/248893/
Myths Stymie Linux Growth
,----[ Quote ]
| Regardless of the advantages offered by Linux, no one seems to be adopting it
| wholeheartedly in the business world. What makes that even more fascinating
| is that the backlash against Windows Vista is not reason enough to fuel the
| move to Linux.
|
| The problem here is that the powers that be have created enough FUD (fear,
| uncertainty and doubt) about Linux that most decision makers feel it is safer
| to stick with Windows (including XP). That FUD is fueled by many myths and
| misconceptions about what Linux can and cannot do.
`----
http://www.channelinsider.com/article/Myths+Stymie+Linux+Growth/220508_1.aspx
Are Linux users really a feral bunch?
,----[ Quote ]
| It is, however, uncommon for a writer to set out to deliberately provoke
| Linux users with over-the-top stuff - just to prove his contention that said
| users are a bunch of ferals.
`----
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15198/1091/
How Not to Treat Your Readership
,----[ Quote ]
| Given how the technology and methods the Linux community uses are constantly
| villified, ridiculed, and held in contempt by competitors; by ill-informed IT
| professionals and hobbyists; and now by journalists who use lies and
| outrageous comments to hold the community's response up for ridicule--is it
| any wonder why the community is so defensive in their responses?
|
| That's not a justification of bad behavior, but it certainly puts such
| responses in another light.
`----
http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-10-26-025-26-OP-CY
http://slated.org/linux_still_doesnt_make_it_on_desktop_is_pure_fud
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03096.pdf
In Defense Of Open Source
,----[ Quote ]
| Naysayers position open source as a sort of geeky pleasure that’s best
| reserved only for unwedded twenty- and thirty-something males residing in
| basements owned by parental figures. That the Linux platform is the product
| of a wide network of hobbyists. That the solutions which subsist within the
| Linux system are not worth equal attention to big-name products from firms
| like Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and others.
`----
http://www.profy.com/2007/08/30/in-defense-of-open-source/
Top 5 Linux Myths
,----[ Quote ]
| The sheer ignorance regarding casual Linux users astounds me to no end. While
| I'm not interested in pointing fingers, there is a lot of misinformation
| about the Linux community, and we will help to dispel some of these myths,
| once and for all.
|
| 1. Linux Users Are Cheap. Ah, this is one of my favorites. It seems that
| Linux users have long since been seen as cheap, despite the fact that so many
| of them in the States earn up to six figures. First, define cheap? Are we
| cheap because we choose not to buy brand new everything with every release of
| our selected OS?
`----
http://www.osweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2618&Itemid=449
,----[ Quote ]
| "After a long and arduous journey that included a suspended validation last
| year .. OpenSSL has regained its FIPS 140-2 validation"
|
| "We called it the FUD campaign," he says. "There were all kinds of
| complaints sent to the CMVP including one about 'Commie code.' .. Silly or
| no, each complaint that's filed really slows down the process."
|
| "the ones they did see often contained redacted, or blacked-out, data about
| who had filed the complaint .. in some cases, proprietary software vendors
| were lodging the complaints.
`----
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/02/08/1935232
Tech writers think Ubuntu is for morons
,----[ Quote ]
| What is it about Ubuntu Linux that makes otherwise competent technical
| writers switch to Moron Mode? Everywhere I turn, I see articles on how to do
| obvious things in Ubuntu. Books on Ubuntu concentrate on listing every
| insignificant detail of every obvious procedure; things that are inherently
| self-explanatory are explained in depth. Subjects that have any inkling of
| technical complexity are skipped because, "Whoa -- those are way too hard for
| you stupid Ubuntu users to grasp, so let's just skip them and pretend
| everything's peachy."
`----
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/340
IT Pro Learns Lesson Through Linux Install
,----[ Quote ]
| Repeated efforts at Nationwide Mutual Insurance to try Linux on the
| mainframe faced internal opposition, some of it from IT employees
| worried that a mainframe-based server consolidation would be a
| threat to their jobs. They "fought tooth and nail to keep it from
| happening," said James Vincent, a mainframe systems engineering
| consultant at Nationwide.
|
| Their resistance taught Vincent a lesson that he put to use after
| the Linux project was finally approved in 2005. Part of Vincent's
| job involved working with the employees who had feared the
| project, including IT staffers who worked on Unix systems.
`----
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/56144.html
The commie smear against open source
,----[ Quote ]
| Because proprietary companies will always spend more of their
| money on marketing than open source outfits, it pops up regularly
| in the best of places, such as at Time Magazine recently. Or
| Microsoft sends CEO Steve Ballmer to London, so he can rant
| about how his lawyers are going to make all Linux users pay
| Microsoft for their stuff.
|
| It's nonsense.
|
| This is not "the gift economy," as Justin Fox calls it in Time.
| This is people taking advantage of the fact that the Internet
| has no distribution costs, which means marketing costs can
| also sink to zero. No ads in Time doesn't make you a communist.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=946
Free software, free speech
,----[ Quote ]
| If you win, your ego is boosted and when you lose you have at least learned
| something. But there are a few tale-tell signs that indicate you've reached
| the end of the line. When your opponent tells you to shut up, he's in fact
| waving the white flag. When the name-calling starts it means he is out for a
| final, berserk attack. It's not about the issue anymore, it's about you, the
| messenger.
|
| I can understand that a teenage, underprivileged geek reacts like that, but
| not mature people who are blessed with the gift of words and the privilege of
| a good education. Regular visitors of my blog know that nothing outrages me
| more than people who apply these guerrilla tactics. Whether it is Ian
| Ferguson who said that "the flaming Linux bigots should take a backseat",
| Mohit Joshi, who equaled GNU to communism or the more recently Bruce Byfield,
| who obviously couldn't take the heat anymore and decided to proclaim
| unilaterally that all bloggers who don't agree with him are
| automatically "conspiracy theorists".
`----
http://thebeezspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/01/free-software-free-speech.html
Sounds like another fanboy rant to me
,----[ Quote ]
| I found this comment while I was browsing through an MS-Windows oriented site
| where a blogger said something nasty about Microsoft. It isn't even worth to
| refer to the link, because it has nothing to do with this story. It's about
| the name-calling these Microsoft fans do. I
| heard 'zealots', 'bigots', 'advocates', the whole lot. Words I never knew
| before, because English is not my native tongue. I don't mind to be called a
| fanboy, because that is what I am. What may be not too clear to these
| Microsoft zealots is why I am a fanboy. It's not because I really dig
| this "free the software, free the world" ideology. That came much later. It's
| because I like this "gimme the source" idea.
|
| [...]
|
| As a matter of fact, I think that Microsoft itself has created the "Linux
| fanboys" they are complaining about, just like all the legal trouble they
| have found themselves in the last few decades. In Dutch there is a
| saying "wie goed doet, goed ontmoet", which means that all good things come
| to those who make them happen. I think the reverse is true as well. So next
| time you call me a "Linux fanboy", remember why I became one. To all
| those "Windows fanboys" I'd like to say, I've become a Linux fanboy because I
| have used Linux for a long time. Have you? I know first hand what MS-Windows
| is all about..
`----
http://thebeezspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/01/sounds-like-another-fanboy-rant-to-me.html
|
|
