Re: [ossig] Open source community needs a haircut and to dress forsuccess? Should I loose my Kurtas (long asian shirts), Jeans and Sandals

[Khairil Yusof <kaeru@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 14:42 +0500, Fouad Riaz Bajwa wrote:

> I found this interesting article posted by Dan Farber about a statement made
> by Former Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn, who was
> deeply involved of the OpenDocument vs. Microsoft format debate, has some
> advice for the open source community. If you want to get traction in
> commercial environments, lose the sandals and ponytails, Quinn said. "Open
> source has an unprofessional appearance, and the community needs to be more
> business-savvy in order to start to make inroads in areas traditionally
> dominated by commercial software vendors. (Having) a face on a project or
> agenda makes it attractive for politicians (to consider open source),"

It's funny when you're a kid, these are the things people teach you:

- Don't judge a book by it's cover
  citing Cinderella, The Ugly Duckling and The Frog Prince

- Don't judge people by their looks.

- Beauty is only skin deep.

So going by this advice:

* Only date supermodels, because you know.. the plain looking girls.
  They're less likely to be respected or have any other good
  qualities.

* Trust the guy in the suit, cause you know a dude sporting a rolly
  and a nice suit is more trustworthy *cough* Enron *cough*

* That you can write bad code and it'll be ok as long as you wear a   
  suit, because that's more trustworthy.

* Oooh.. shiny buttons and curved windows, this must be a better
  product. 

How quickly we forget that it wasn't too long ago that the suits were
evil monopolists (IBM), and that the IT t-shirt wearing hippies were
cool and good (Microsoft). History repeats itself I guess.

This is a cultural thing and it's always give an take. It could have
just easily be written from another point of view - 

"Wearing suits may make you less trustworthy to technical people. So if
you want to engage open source people for business, dress casual."




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