Re: SEUL: Linux advocacy documents team?

[EAMorical@aol.com]

Roger writes:
>Recently, it's become apparent that more and more Linux advocacy documents
>are springing up, but their creation and development remains uncoordinated.
>All of you have written or maintain a well-written and insightful document
>related to Linux advocacy. There are many such documents out there; while
>many of them start out very thorough and up to date, it's very difficult to
>maintain that after the initial copy is finished and released. 
 
>Seul has such a document (http://www.seul.org/docs/whylinux.html) -- it
>started out really good, but it's slowly getting out of date. That seems to

Interesting, I was thinking of commenting on that last night.

>be the case for a lot of other documents I've seen. I'd like to gather
>together some good writers and good thinkers, and figure out what needs to
>be done wrt Linux advocacy documents.

I'm willing because I believe this is another critical area.
 
>At the least, we should come up with a list of the current good documents
>that are available, possibly with commentary on each. We should notify
>those people I haven't noticed yet, and try to help people become more
>sychronized and aware of our efforts. I'd like this to be a group of
>people who generally all agree on what advocacy means, and what the good
>and bad aspects of Linux are -- discussion of the best way to present
>issues is great, but debate on the issues themselves will slow us down a
>lot. As such, it will be a closed group, and people can join by
>invitation.
 
>The next step would be to figure out which categories need to be covered:
>a list of the pros and cons of using Linux is very different from a list
>of common myths and counter-arguments to them, is very different from a
>list of anecdotes or press articles describing Linux successes. We need to
>come up with one or a few documents in each category, and make sure they
>remain comprehensive and timely.
 
>I have several goals in mind. First of all, we should provide (either
>write or collect) a set of comprehensive and clear documents to help guide
>Linux advocates, in terms of good arguments to make and good ways to
>present them. These same documents would also be very beneficial from
>the point of view of the press, because there would finally be a good
>place to look to get "the answer" in terms of why Linux is better, or
>why a particular claim about Windows isn't as reasonable as it sounds.
>(Indeed, this implies that maybe we should contact places with misleading
>advocacy and try to guide them to the light. But that gets much trickier.)

This is to critical to set aside. For example Scientific American has shown a
pattern of bias toward Microsoft and against Linux. The local school system
strongly teaches copyright laws with no mention of copyleft a better
alternative. The average person is unaware of the issues of free software.

>And of course, the documents would be useful for new users or companies
>considering switching to Linux.
 
>I can help out with some of the leadership for this (and particularly
>the 'vision' side, though I expect quite a few of us have a strong vision),
>but it would be nice if some others wanted to help out with leadership.
>(Perhaps we would end up splitting it by category, though there will be
>some overlap. My preference is in the "Why Linux?" direction; I also
>expect that we will have to ignore some categories, because other people
>are already dealing with them better than we can.) Anyway, if you're
>interested in helping out to make this happen, even if you just have some
>spare time to help edit what other people come up with, please contact me.
>Once I've gotten some responses, I'll set up a list for discussion (private
>list, publically archived) and send out another note with a pointer to the
>list.
 
>Thanks for your time. Comments greatly appreciated,
>--Roger Dingledine, SEUL project leader

1999 The Year Of Linux
Make It Happen

Bob