RE: Linux Demo Day

[Stephen J. Turnbull <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> Richard == Richard <r.ibbotson [at] zetnet.co.uk> writes:

Richard> SIMS, Paul, LCTL <psims [at] lombard.co.uk>RE: LInux Demo Day

>> Meadowhall is a commercial concern, it was one of my original
>> arguments as to why they would refuse permission, health
>> safety aside. They are perfectly at liberty to accept or deny
>> whoever they choose, for whatever reason, since it is private
>> property. To accuse them of promoting illiteracy is like
>> accusing London Underground promoting a hatred of music because
>> they (theoretically) don't allow buskers.

Richard> I'm not trying to accuse them of anything. Just
Richard> trying to pass on some info. I find salesman to be a
Richard> strange crowd of folk who are not too well hinged
Richard> upstairs.

Let's both be a little more straightforward, here, hm? Richard, you
in fact did _accuse_ them of promoting illiteracy. But Paul, even
if Richard's phrasing was, ah, intemperate, it seems to me that
Richard has as much right to express his opinion of Meadowhall's
decision, and make completely unsupported assertions about what their
policy is, as they do to refuse to support a Linux demo day.

Somewhere off of http://www.opensource.org/ is a Guerrilla Guide to
promoting free software in organizations. You might take a look at
that and see if there are any ideas that might appeal to the
Meadowhall board, or better yet, to the retailers. I think it's
misguided of them to try to protect their existing base by denying a
platform to alternative products (not least because it makes Richard's
accusation plausible, and that's bad for them), but they do have that
right. So what we need to do is show them the advantage in
distributing Linux and related products.

For what it's worth, here in Japan bigger retailers got on board as
soon as shrink-wrapped packages started to appear. The reasoning
apparently was sort of marketing imperialism (we may not want to sell
this much, but it's imperative to prevent competition from arising
because new stores start up to fill the niche). Last quarter (as
you've probably heard) Linux outsold Windows 98 (not including
pre-installs, of course) in retail outlets in Japan.

Another aspect that might interest retailers is that for commodity
servers, mail, netnews, non-ebusiness web servers, and especially
Windows and Mac file servers, Windows NT has peaked here. Linux
simply is more flexible and more reliable in those tasks. As you
already know, but it's so much so that it is in fact becoming risky to
your employment health (here in academia, anyway) to buy Microsoft for
certain tasks. And that will be of interest to retailers, I suspect.

Finally, I don't know how it works in the UK, but in both the US and
Japan computer shops make a lot of their money on consulting, system
integration, and education. In the current environment, Linux is a
solution that a small shop can promote and be very expert on, at not
all that much expense; makes them look good.

Open source is an inclusive movement by definition. If possible, we
should even try to include our apparent enemies. :-)

--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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