Re: [ossig] Gates visit to Malaysia to cultivate talent

[Christopher DeMarco <cdemarco@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 02:32:51PM +0800, Raja Iskandar Shah wrote:

> is there anything that  we can do to exploit  this opportunity ? for
> example,  if m$  promotes visual  studio,  we can  promote eclipse /
> netbeans ? whatever that   bill gates  is  promoting there  are  oss
> equivalent (which just needs some nice packaging).

IMHO, if you fight on M$' turf you  will lose.  If  you try to package
and  then market  [FL?]OSS  to compete with    M$, unless you  have an
equivalent budget in time and money to  what M$ has already spent, you
will  lose.    Trad. software   vendors   are  very  good  at  getting
pointy-haired bosses (pointy-haired politicians?)  to drool over their
latest-n-greatest.   Like it or not,  until  [FL?]OSS gets a marketing
department at least as  good as one which is  motivated by  profit, it
will be  at a   severe disadvantage  in  boardroom  pissing  contests,
regardless of its capabilities and technical merit.

However...

I would take the offensive - rather than  saying "we can do D-n-D too,
we can co-operate with .NET, we can blah  blah blah", bring the battle
to them.  Show  how  M$'  products are   massively insecure,  do   not
interoperate with  other vendors' products,  violate standards and are
technically  inferior.  Cite the recent    Russian Trojan attack,  the
Netsky epidemic and   the *terrifying* precedent set   by Witty.  Talk
about  the    benefits of [FL?]OSS  for   government,  particularly in
contrast  to  the risks posed  by  entrusting national resources  to a
convicted foreign monopolist.  

Ask why you should  have to sign an NDA  to "share" their  source, and
whether that will help or hinder the emerging  Knowledge Economy.  Ask
whether vendor lock-in and bloodthirsty licensing fees are really what
the government sees in Vision   2020.  Ask whether public  information
should be held  hostage   in proprietary, undocumented   formats.  Ask
*again* whether security  is a priority,   because it is  demonstrably
*not* a priority for M$.

We're grown-ups  now.  Dictate the  terms of engagement,  make *Billy*
play catch-up for a change.  We're not "just as  good", we're a heluva
lot better.  

-- 
~ You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

  Christopher DeMarco
  cdemarco@fastmail.fm
  +6013 389 5658


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