Zeljko Blace on Sun, 26 Oct 2003 12:15:05 +0100 (CET) |
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[nettime-see] <nettime> More on: [European Commission publishes its guide to OSSmigration] (fwd) |
Malo nepopularnog forwardiranja emaila... ipak cini mi se vaznim. From: "Benj. Mako Hill" <mako@bork.hampshire.edu> To: Summer Source List <summersource-l@tacticaltech.org> Subject: Re: [SummerSource-L] [Fwd: European Commission publishes its guide to OSS migration] Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:11:42 -0700 [Feel free to quote me or forward this message off of this list.] (et idem...) It's an interesting read and I generally like TheReg very much and have read Lettice's articles many times in the past. In an indirect way, the article is very critical of Free software advocates and I certainly have no problem with this. However, I see the conflation of the Free Software/Open Source advocacy from advocates like myself and from the marketing-types at IBM and Lindows as a little unfair. As far as the marketing folks go, highlighting benefits and downplaying problems is what they have *always* done and if people choose to be less critical in regards to FOSS because they like it or hate Windows, it seems unfair to blame the movement. Non-marketing type advocates, outside of the USENET, high school LUG and Slashdot forums crowds, are, IMHO, quite reasonable. They will give you a philosophical reason for why open document formats are essential as a reason to get you away from Word -- arguments that you may or may not buy into -- but they won't tell you that OpenOffice.org can run every Excel macro and they won't tell you that you can run Your AOL on GNU/Linux until you can. I haven't read the report but if it's really just a transition guide, it sounds less like advocacy and more like documentation. The Windows Compatibility HOWTO (pick one really) isn't going to tell you that you can write to NTFS when you can't. These docs spell out the details of what works, what doesn't and and what you'll need to do to make things work. Often these guides will be written by advocates and often the political or philosophical motivations are described. But *no* worthwhile technical document begins without a listing of limitations. While the existence of documents like this set of guidelines is essential, it's also not new (although this one may be the first to do what it's trying to do this well and I'm looking forward to bringing it clients in the future), lets not slight advocates for not writing documentation just like we wouldn't condemn documentation writers for listing limitations because that might weaken an advocacy argument. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@bork.hampshire.edu http://mako.yukidoke.org/ Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results. --RMS ............................................... Nettime-SEE mailing list Nettime-SEE@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-see