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

[Poh Yang Ming <pohyg@xxxxxxxxx>]

what is lacking in OSS is cultivation of talent, which
is mostly self driven.

there is little out there to teach and help to
cultivate talent. and eventually, with growing smaller
population of OSS developers, less apps, less support
and it dies.

MS is betting on that. even if the IHL dun buy MS, any
individual researchers can buy for RM700+ a whole
package to develop using MS tech in the lab.(I m still
checking on this, just heard about it). couple with
teaching and msdn/technet connection... shrink the
developer population, and that is it.

so what will OSS community do to teach more to use and
more importantly develop on OSS?

cheers.

--- Christopher DeMarco <cdemarco@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 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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