[clug-talk] M$ revenue falls, open source "blamed"

[Dafydd Crosby]

TekBudda wrote:
> He later retracted his comments, apologized & deleted the comments, 
> but it is all over the net & as we know nothing is ever deleted off 
> the InterWeb.  Reactions have ranged from disgusted to whatever, but 
> the long and short of the one article I read stated that "comments 
> like this are needed or welcomed in the FLOSS community."  People's 
> personal political ideas have nothing to do with how the technology is 
> used & who uses it.  OSS is all about personal choice & using what you 
> want to to get the job done.
>
> In the same way that people are watching MS, they are also watching 
> the FLOSS community including CLUG.  SO anytime we mock BG, 
> Monkey-boy, etc. we need to be careful what we say & how we say it.  
> If it is a valid criticism that can be supported, Great!  If it is a 
> general comment or something fun & silly...hey why not!  But personal 
> attacks in a public forum do a lot more damage then MS, Apple or 
> anyone else can do.
>
> I count myself as guilty of the above as well...and I should be ashamed.
I've thought for a long time that the FLOSS community could use a good 
PR firm (possibly in-house). Hype and damage-control are something that 
Apple and MS have, and while we could take the purist, academic stance, 
the truth is FLOSS needs people who know how to accentuate the positive 
and attenuate the negative.

How many projects have done insanely cool or groundbreaking work, only 
to get no mainstream press (or end up being called 'derivative' by other 
OS vendors)? Compiz (as narrow in purpose as it is) looks freaking 
awesome, but you don't see video of it on the CBC. That could be 
changed, if there were people dedicated to the task...