OSNews

Presenting anything concerning computers/computer software in any kind of public venue inheritly presupposes a certain degree of technical interest-computers and their software are technical-even if many people fail to recognize their own technical prowess even in such mundane things like manipulating a mouse-pointing at objects and clicking. Computers and software are already associated with work-and any degree of knowledge which is required to successfully do such work is, in the last instance, technical knowledge, even in those cases where the people barely grasp what they are doing.

Going overboard with "technical" talk, talk where numbers, empirical facts, specifications and features are dominant can indeed overhwelm the targeted(ie. general public) audience and turn them off. Yet without such acronyms, ie. the identity of said such groups who shall be presenting, such a presentation would be pointless. When microsoft presents their new products to the market people listen because it is microsoft-this is name recognition-virtually everyone who has ever used a computer in the last 20 years has heard of microsoft and know that Windows and Office/Word/Excel are microsoft products.

When microsoft annnounces new software people know this means changes, changes in how they work. In this context getting name recognition is profoundly difficult- for most people there is only one piece of software which is always present on all computers that they use-and that is microsoft-most people don't tend to differentiate between operating systems,applications and platforms-microsoft is at once a platform with multiple differing implementations(ie. operating systems) which provides a fairly consisent environment for a variety of applications.

Promoting FLOSS software is difficult when the targeted audience only speaks windowese and use that as standard of measurement to judge everything else by. In offices where people use Wordperfect the users tend to know that it's not from microsoft, but it is still a windows program, it looks and acts like most of the rest of the software to which one is already accustomed. Microsoft is effectively the BIOS of most computers-and many people believe that it is built into the computer-ie. that it is a part of the computer itself. They never see computers without word processing applications so word processing applications, be they Word or Wordperfect are quasi built-ins.

The only name recognition of products for Windows, which are not from microsoft, for most users are very specific task bound pieces of software which are distinctly different than the rest of the system. People tend to know generic concepts like browser, word processing, spreadsheet programs, etc. Most users don't care which brand of software they are using as long as it doesn't present them with to many hurdles,ie. moments where they can't do this or that like they could in that other program. Why ?. Because the different companies producing propietary software are not selling anything different than microsoft. Huh? They are just yet another company selling yet another program which does the same thing, costs the same ammount (relatively), which offers the same (basically) functionality which are used for the same purposes.

This is where FLOSS comes into play-
Firstly, they are not selling something-such software is not first and foremost about making money/marketing and selling products and are not usually associated with a particular company or nationality.

Secondly, much of their offerings are platform independent and independent of particular operating systems-meaning that in many cases the same software runs on windows, macintosh or *nix systems-which means you can use the same software at home that you do at the office without having to have the same system at home which was provided to you by your employer and without having to spend large amounts of money to have this, or on any two computrs at work(ie. pirating software becomes pointless)

Thirdly, they are manifestations of different social structures which encourage user-participation,something unheard of in the propietary world, and which promote communities for exchange and feedback, enabling local communities and in-house communities for custom tailored software solutions, which are interconnected internationally drawing from vast resources of human potentital.

Fourthly, such software can be implemented in ways which enable new combinations and interactivity which go beyond the copy and paste functionality of windows-something which enable those users who who desire to do so to develop their own working combinations of applications which streamline what they need and desire to do without being utterly dependent upon the built-in functions of the propietary software.

FLOSS encourages ordinary user to be more than mere ordinary users. So yet again how is it that such software should differentiate itself from their propietary siblings ? Oh Mozilla has a pop-up blocker, but hey you know IE 8.0 has pop-up blockers too......OpenOffice has PDF export but hey at work we have Acrobat distiller....

The advantages which FLOSS software offer are anything but obvious for the ordinary user. Those who promote FLOSS have a difficult task: thesy must at once a) offer the same functionality which there propietary sibilings offer with positive points of differentiation which makes them "better" and b) provide the whole wealth of things which accompany FLOSS development-things which are unimaginable in the propietary world- things which however taken together alter the economics, politics, and social enviroment in which software is developed and used.

It is the culmanitve effects, taken over time, which show the true benefits of FLOSS-those who promote this are asking users to have patience with the the current shortcommings in order to realize potentials which are just now surfacing. The ramifications of these developments are political, are economic, are social. In a future where FLOSS comprises 50% of the used applications in the work world know one will be wondering where the suppossed benefits are due to the fact that questions will have changed-those questions which dominate the workspace computer usage today, questions about compatibility, about format interchangability, etc. will be surplanted with new questions like which combination of tools is best suited for this particular set of goals defined by this set of possibilities enables by the use of open-seemless platform/format interchangability-or questions like-hey what are the municipal offices of Paris using to manage there new subway timetable publications-can we use their code here in New York coupled with those modifications which the transit authority of Chicago implemented last year?


FLOSSmeans more local employment, more local development, more in-house expertise, more programming jobs, more economic and political independence, more sharing of experience and expertise, more communication and more international communities of exchange, more transparent governmental investments, more accountability, more particiaption of users, more people working together for common goals and less petty infighting, NIH, value through obscurity, need-to-know rigid communication hierarchies, etc, and less computer "drones" who must perform mind-numbing brain dead simple tasks. The Whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts, is what is being changed in the transition to FLOSS solutions.

When the things I have talked about here are what FLOSSis really all about-how would you promote such to cynical, disillusioned, apathetic drones,ie. workspace computer users ? Your suggestions are worthless in this context although I too would like to see more women involved in these developments .