Linked by Henrik Nilsen Omma on Tue 9th Mar 2004 05:48 UTC
You, the reader, are hereby invited to participate in a celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) on August 28th this year. On that day we will stage public events to inform the general public about the virtues of FOSS. We invite you to form local teams and set up tables in town centers, shopping malls, or wherever there are likely to be lots of people on a Saturday.
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The posts of Hugo and dpi are good examples of the type of approaches that would and wouldn't work with the general public. No offense to dpi or the points made (some of which I agree with), but that conversational tone would only reinforce the image of OSS advocates as inflexible, argumentative zealots. As we know, a few are, but these shouldn't be the people interacting with the general public. Hugo's suggestions (as opposed to Suggestions?) are reasonable, and I don't think he needs to back them up with numbers. If he were advocating some radical new direction for OSS, I'd put his opinions to more scrutiny, but in this case, I think its safe to relax...
You aren't going to get someone to use OSS by babbling on about the evils of Gates or MS, or spinning tales of Darth McBride in his mother ship. Your potential recruit will only say "Huhhhhh?", forcing you to further babble about SCO, RMS, ESR, IBM, and perhaps other 3-letter acronyms in the hat. And this will get you an even louded "HUHHHH?" if they don't outright walk away.
My advice? Be nice, smile, answer questions, don't say anything negative. Don't act like you are converting someone to a "movement", just give them a copy of your favorite distro and tell them why you like it. Something that doesn't risk a HD wipeout would be good - maybe Knoppix or one of the other LiveCD's out there. A few people might be wary of viruses, but most will be genuinely curious about a free CD they are given, with promises of a cool new program or OS on it.
The absolute worst approach to getting OSS users is intimidation out of fear or moral necessity. Most people reserve those sorts of arguments for their religious beliefs, and when they hear it made about that little box on their desk - which isn't a central part of their lives - they tend to put you in the tinfoil hat crowd.