Thanks for that
Tom wrote:
Good discussion so far. Lots of light, very little heat.
Thank you for reading it in the spirit intended. I admit to harbouring some lingering resentment at some of the treatment I received on the aforementioned OS X mailing list ("x4u"), what with the anonymous hatemail and gratuitous Church of Steve "witnessings" I kept being subjected to, on grounds of insufficient ideological purity and excessive technical aptitude. But of course that wasn't anybody here, doing that.
The worst aspect of that treatment was that it was willfully unclear on the basic concept of why I was (and wasn't) participating, there. I mentioned the guy who incessantly tried to troll me into MacOS vs. Linux advocacy debates (in which I had no interest). Since he kept trying nonetheless, I tried to explain to him that, because of their different licence model, Linux users had no stake in his choice of operating system: Their core interests were simply not subject to zero-sum popularity contests with other OS environments. I suggested that, if it really bothered him that much that I was posting (useful, correct) OS X technical answers from "rick@linuxmafia.com" using Linux console mailers, he should seek some more private form of therapy, as the barrage of non-sequitur OS advocacy was both clueless and annoying.
And, of course, he didn't listen. I quietly killfiled him, which removed the problem from my view, at least.
That gentleman was hardly alone in attributing imaginary, fanatical nag-people-style OS advocacy to Linux users who've merely answered technical questions and sport X-Mailer headers and .signature blocks to match. Sam Varghese, an excellent Australian IT industry analyst and reporter, recently interviewed me for an upcoming series of articles in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Here's part of my interview:
You've been described as a rabble rouser. True? False?
The rumours are true, but I raise only top-quality rabble.
We have a saying in the Linux community: "If you don't like the news, make some of your own." Here in the San Francisco / Silicon Valley area, a number of us found to our surprise that we're pretty good at Linux publicity events, and have done a number of them. We had a huge summer picnic in celebration of Linux's 10th birthday in 2001, and had such a good time that we repeated it this past summer, too. In 1998, we had several PR events where we good-naturedly capitalised on Microsoft marketing efforts to show up in public and on-camera, such as during the product launch of Windows 98, where we gave out hundreds of Linux CD-ROMs to people interested in installing them (and pointing out where the stores were also selling Linux boxed sets).
One of the surprises of those years was that we seemed to be significantly more effective at marketing than Microsoft Corporation was, and with no funding at all.
How many people have you converted to Linux? Take the case of any one individual you've converted to Linux. Let's have a rundown of the process.
This is my golden opportunity to embarrass my friend Bill Schoolcraft, so I'm going to run with it. Bill was a professional industrial welder with no particular computer expertise, when he noticed Linux gatherings and started attending them to see what it was about. I was one of the old-timers he learned from, and I successfully badgered him to take extensive notes. I think it was when I kept using the metaphor of software as tools, and stressing the difference good tools and mastery of them can make, that he really "got" the point of the Unix way of thinking. Now, six years later, he's a senior Linux and (Sun Microsystems) Solaris administrator, and earns a good living at it.
But I don't seek to "convert" people in the sense of trying to interest those who prefer something else. Why would I? More about that, below.
Do you think you could achieve more if your advocacy was a little less strident?
I'm reminded of a story about the 19th century US public speaker and political figure Robert G. Ingersoll, who was wildly popular with the public but inspired influential "establishment" detractors by being openly non-religious: Some reporters came to visit, and asked him about the rumours that his son had gotten drunk during a wild party and fell unconscious under the table. Ingersoll paused for effect, then started: "Well, first of all, he didn't fall under the table. And he wasn't actually unconscious. For that matter, he didn't fall. And there wasn't any party, and he didn't have anything to drink.... And, by the way, I don't have a son."
So: It's not what I'd call strident, and I don't do advocacy. At least, not in the usual sense of the term.
The usual sort of OS advocacy is what the "Team OS/2" crowd used to do: They knew that their favourite software would live or die by the level of corporate acceptance and release/maintenance of proprietary shrink-wrapped OS/2 applications. They lobbied, they lost, IBM lost interest, and now their favourite OS is effectively dead.
But Linux is fundamentally different because it and all key applications are open source: The programmer community that maintains it is self-supporting, and would keep it advancing and healthy regardless of whether the business world and general public uses it with wild abandon, only a little, or not at all. Because of its open-source licence terms, its raw source code is permanently available. Linux cannot be "withdrawn from the market" at the whim of some company -- as is slowly happening to OS/2.
Therefore, Linux users are not in a zero-sum competition for popularity with proponents of other operating systems (unlike, say, OS/2, MS-Windows, and Mac OS users). I can honestly wish Apple Computer well with their eye-pleasing and well-made (if a bit slow and inflexible) Mac OS X operating system: Wishing them well doesn't mean wishing Linux ill.
Note that all of the identifiable "Linux companies" could blow away in the breeze like just so much Enron stock, and the advance of Linux would not be materially impaired, because what matters is source code and the licensing thereof, which has rather little to do with any of those firms' fortunes.
Further, and getting back to your original point, I honestly don't care if you or anyone else gets "converted" to Linux. I don't have to. I'm no better off if you do; I'm no worse off if you don't.
What I do care about is giving making useful information and help available to people using Linux or interested in it. Why? Partly to redeem the trust shown by others when they helped me. Partly because it's interesting. Partly because researching and then teaching things I usually start knowing little about is the best way I know to learn. And partly out of pure, unadulterated self-interest: People knowing your name is at least a foot in the door, in the IT business.
As to stridency, there is a well-known problem of all on-line discussion media: Some people become emotionally invested in positions they've taken in technical arguments, and gratuituously turn technical disagreements into verbal brawls. And unfortunately they tend to be drawn to people like me who attempt to state their views clearly and forcefully. It's as if you were to say "I like herring" and thereby summon every dedicated herring-hater within a hundred-mile radius. The problem comes with the territory.
But that causes occasional unpleasantness and back-biting among some on-line Linux users, not an aspect of "advocacy", which isn't something we have much use for, generally -- especially where the term refers to convincing the unwilling.
What do you hope to achieve by this advocacy?
I hope to have fun, to learn, to help those willing to "help themselves" by learning about their systems, to become qualified to work professionally with better and more-interesting technology, to spend more of my time around people I enjoy, and to improve my quality of life by improving the grade of tools I work with.
Please note that "converting users to Linux" is nowhere on that list.
