Re: [Fsfe-uk] Fwd: OSS Watch inaugural conference, 11 December 2003

[Alex Hudson]

On Fri, 2003-11-28 at 10:08, Andrew Savory wrote:
> The biggest problem with "open source evangelists" these days is their
> frequent inability to accept that people may want or need to hear both
> sides of the story. The open hostility with which they launch into
> arguments claiming the proprietary vendors have no right to put their
> side of the story frankly marks the evangelists as no better than the
> proprietary vendors. It also alienates the very people they seek to
> convert.

I'm not sure that's quite the argument that was being put forward :)

Personally, I would think that an "open source" conference should not
have proprietary vendors. If people want information on proprietary
software, then there are plenty of conferences for them - people are
more than able to get both sides of the story. I think the point was
that it's unfair that a conference about free software would also have
to talk about proprietary software to be seen as balanced when the
reverse is not true.

Free software technologies do not tend to get a fair hearing at
proprietary conferences in my experience. Some of the more mixed I can
think of would be InternetWorld (only just..) and the like, but
generally they're not welcome since they don't have single vendors who
represent the technology. It's not that proprietary vendors don't have
the right to put their side of the story, but that they have more than
equal chance to do that already.

I agree totally that to be balanced, you need to recognise that
alternatives exist. I would be worried, though, if Microsoft were able
to use the platform at OSSWatch conference to promote their
technologies. I don't believe that's balance, or recognising the
alternative - neural promotion of free software doesn't require
promotion of proprietary software. 

Cheers,

Alex.