[Wylug-discuss] PDA's in schools

[Mike Goodman]

Hi, Folks,

What the OS community and advocates do not have is a huge "PR" - for
which read slush - fund. M$ spend many millions each year, all around
the world, not on direct advertising, but in promoting various "worthy
causes", like wheedling their way in to small business forums, schools,
quasi-government IT bodies and a lot more. Bodies which in the main, and
in this country at least, by the way, are funded by our money.

The sad fact is that, until we are prepared to organise ourselves and
our allies towards a huge and co-ordinated counter-strategy, we will be
forever on the back foot in this respect. So long as M$ pursue this
course of action effectively unchallenged, M$ itself will be perceived
as "a good thing" by the bulk of the population and, more importantly, a
great swathe of policy makers who should know and indeed are paid to
know a good deal better.

This would entail persuading the like of IBM, Novell, Red Hat and others
to co-ordinate their activities rather than taking on M$ more directly
in the courts around the world when the latter crosses the line of
decency in its claims and assertions, which it very often does. Without
allies with that kind of muscle, we are unlikely to be too effective.

My 2d - oops, 2p now - for what it's worth.

Mike

On Wed, 2007-01-10 at 16:18 +0000, John Leach wrote:
> Dave Fisher wrote:
> > If nothing else, it's recurrence is confirmation that open source
> > advocates are pathetic at getting their messages over to the general
> > public ... mostly because their messages aren't even targeted at, or
> > digestable by, the general public (or teachers).
> > 
> 
> Hi Dave,
> 
> I don't mean to seem petty, but your observation of its recurrence over
> the last 10 years doesn't lead directly to the conclusion that
> "advocates are pathetic at getting their messages across".
> 
> I'm sure you'll agree that many other variables are at play here.
> 
> I am not suggesting that advocates messages are beyond great improvement
> though :)
> 
> John.
> 
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