What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

As I mentioned on the tech show last night, an essay that Moose and I wrote was published on Rikki’s Roseblog on Linux Magazine.

It is a call to end the elitism that continues to hold open source back.

Nothing about who a person is prevents them from being a participant in Open Source other than people’s attitudes.

The Ohio LinuxFest welcomes all participants to the Ohio LinuxFest.

Don’t have a Linux box now? We offer a Linux basics class with a computer that you can take home

Have a tight budget? That’s why we offer free registration

Don’t think you look/are geeky enough? Let’s work together to change those perceptions at the Diversity in Open Source Workshop

Elitism isn’t just a women’s issue, a minority issue, or a new to open source issue. It’s about smug fools who think that they alone possess the DNA to understand and enjoy open source.

The Ohio LinuxFest and the Diversity in Open Source Workshop have a mission to change the attitudes starting this year.

Could someone at Microsoft contribute to the Open Source community? I’ve been told they have. Going open source is the only way for Microsoft to stay relevant in 2011.

The Ohio LinuxFest has received meager promotional attention from the audience that it serves: the Open Source community.

Lately, the term “community” keeps getting thrown out there as a marketing ploy. People have become very skeptical in this day in age. Even the simple favor of asking someone to let their local user group know about the Ohio LinuxFest is pushed to the waste-side.

Why? There are quite a few misconceptions that we need to clear up right now.

1. The Ohio LinuxFest is an all volunteer non-profit event that is meant to be the uber Linux user group meeting for anybody who can make the trip. Smaller lugs should feel espesically welcome in that they might not have *any* activities the whole year besides a few cars going out the Ohio LinuxFest. That’s who we are for the past 7 years and that’s who we will always be.

2. The Ohio LinuxFest offers free admission. Why? Chances are you user group meeting does not charge to see the great talks, miggle with some folks with common interests, and share their experiences. While everyone has something to contribute, even if it is your ideas on how to make open source better.

3. The Ohio LinuxFest is a corporately sponsored event. That doesn’t make us an info-merical. Nor does that make us a suitfest. We welcome our sponsors as part of the expo because they are part of the community too. The sponsors tend to bring they’re A-Game engineers and community advocates to the show because that’s who in their company enjoys the Ohio LinuxFest most. Some events will exclude people who are under 18 from the show floor, give a few FOSS and nonprofits poor show floor position, and offer “free” exhibit only passes to people who hold purchase making authority. We thank our sponsors for making a true free admission possible and treat our fellow nonprofits with respect. Check out the expo for yourself.

So, why all the urgency of a 5-alarm fire? In order to make this a great show, people do need to register and attend the Ohio LinuxFest. This week is your very last chance to sign-up. Things were concerningly slow in the Labor day week which historically gets about 50% of the registrations that week alone. Time is running out folks.

4. There isn’t all the time in the world to register for the Ohio LinuxFest. That is in two weekends. Ten days. September 25-27. Take a look at the schedule and there’s bound to be something of interest. Want to come in for only one day? Cool. Be there for what interests you most.

5. It is not expensive to travel to the Ohio LinuxFest. Many of the US Midwest cities who have been hit the hardest by the economy are about one gas tank away. Just load up one car and see that you too can attend for less than 20 bucks. Even if you stay the night, the hotel rooms are much cheaper in Ohio than the west coast. Unemployed? I’ve heard they’re still hiring in Columbus. We are in central Ohio to be accessible being within 500 miles of 50% of the North Ameican population.

6. We do not have a marketing budget. The Ohio LinuxFest has depended on you, the community to help us get the word out. This isn’t spam. It is helpping your neighborhood all-volunteer nonprofit with outreach. Even if you can’t attend our event, please help us spread the word. Please post our banners. Pass on our press releases with your favorite social networking site.

5 Alarm Fire — We need your support and votes — just a small amount of
time!

Please join us for a session on Internet Relay chat irc.oftc.net #ohiolinux at
Sunday, September 13 at 8 PM EST. There will be a brief announcement
followed by instructions.

Your participation will have a sizable impact on OLF — we need you, for
just a small amount of time, but it will make all the difference in the
world.

Until Sunday night, there are two ways you can help
1. Let people know an announcement is afoot. Blog or forward this message.
2. Tell us we can count on you http://www.ohiolinux.org/bethere.html

This is extremely important or else I would not be asking in this matter.

Sincerely,
Beth Lynn Eicher

I attended a regional gathering of Association of PC User Groups in central Ohio. The Annual Meeting at the Ohio Midwest Regional was somewhat of a marketing event for Microsoft as the dinner keynote was a preview of Windows 7.  With that said, I won’t not say that Microsoft sabotaged this event since it was their show anyway.

To my surprise, they wanted me to speak. I told the audience that there are only three places where Microsoft continues to hold market share:

1. Desktop Operating system – Microsoft Vista was disappointing product for consumers. It lacked the 3rd party hardware and software vendor buy-in that XP had. Vista also lacked the marketing brilliance of Bill Gates. The Vista users I found were not happy and wanted Microsoft to give them Windows 7 for free for their trouble. I told them that I don’t know if Microsoft will do that but Linux is always free to everybody.

2. Web Browser – IE doesn’t ship with Windows as per EU law in Europe. How much longer will the US allow this anti-trust practice continue?

3. Office Suite – Microsoft breaks patent law with Word 2007. Sure they’re appealing but this will not be a cheap ride for Microsoft. I can’t see how they can release Word 2010 unless this is settled in Microsoft’s favor. Bottom line is this is far more expensive to Microsoft than the $300 million. While Microsoft ligates, Open Office innovates.

I was also there to represent the Ohio Linuxfest. We had a table and we registered folks for our show on September 25-27. We gave away Ubuntu 9.04. Some asked for more copies to hand out at their user group. It was an amazing opportunity to show people Linux for the very first time. Everyone liked that it was a forever sort of free instead of Microsoft’s idea of free where the operating system shuts down after two hours.

We had a free raffle a the Ohio Linuxfest table. We gave away a TomTom. It runs Linux and Microsoft did their best to shut down TomTom. To the the truth, TomTom still makes one of the best GPS units out there.

As part of the raffle, I asked people the question do they use Linux. Yes or No. The answer didn’t disqualify. All I wanted is some realistic data as to what people use who attend a PC users group meeting.

Here are the results:
30 answered YES
26 answered NO
7 answered “not yet” – This was unprompted. Does the yet imply that they might try Linux sometime in the future?
3 failed to indicate if they use Linux. Maybe they didn’t understand the directions?
Anyhow that is 44.7% Linux users in a PC user group. The crowd was about 40% women.

I expected to find a least one Microsoft fan through and through there. This was Jay Ferron who is a consultant who does contracts for Microsoft. He also the Microsoft 7 keynote. I tried to tell Jay that I tried to try Windows 7 Release Candidate but I can not get this thing to install on anything. It doesn’t get very far before it hangs. I don’t even get an opportunity to format the disk. I guess I will have to wait until mid October to by my Windows 7 copy. If I do get a copy of Windows 7, I will install it and do side by side comparisons to Linux. I told Jay this was my plan. I gave Jay a card asking him to contact me with my email address and the url of this blog. I have yet to see an email from Jay and his email isn’t public.

Jay tried to convince me that Microsoft was cooperating with Linux and giving source code. Now, I expected Jay to talk about Microsoft’s arrangement with Novell or the HyperV inclusion in the Linux kernel. Instead he talked about something that continues to baffle me.

Jay claimed that he met with Sue in a closed meeting in Washington state. Sue, the Ubuntu community manager, who works for Ubuntu the company. I asked Jay twice if he is sure that Sue didn’t work for Canonical. He insisted that Sue works for Ubuntu. In this meeting, Jay was playing the role of the Microsoft insider. Sue, so Jay claims, gave Jay a copy of Ubuntu 9.05 but it was not to be released to the community. Microsoft gave Sue some unreleased source code of their own. There were some unnamed Red Hat employees who executed similar deals.

Here is the real deal Jay and world.

Jono Bacon is the Ubuntu Community Manager. He was on vacation when the supposed deal took place. Jorge Castro is his backup. Both Jono and Jorge are Cannonical employees as there is no company named “Ubuntu.” Cannonical is the company that sponsors the Ubuntu Linux distibution. Ubutnu 9.04 refers to the latest stable release and it is not old as it was released in April 2009 – that’s why  it’s called 9.04. The unstable release is spun daily and it is called 9.10 because it will be ready for stable release at 9.10. Anyone in the the world can download 9.10 and its source here. This includes those Microsoft. It’s simply impossible that Ubuntu would make a closed source deal because that completely goes against what they’re all about. Since Jay didn’t try to name drop with the Red Hat folks, I won’t break it down but I strongly doubt Red Hat would be interested in Microsoft’s closed source software.

This is a report of the Operating Systems that were used by the readers of www.whatwillweuse.com

1. Firefox     1,270     60%
2. Safari     297     14%
3. Mozilla     238     11%
4. Internet Explorer     89     4%
5. Identification Blocked     85     4%
6. Chrome     45     2%
7. Opera     20     <1%
8. Konqueror     15     <1%
9. iPhone     13     <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the global report for August 2009

This is a report of the Operating Systems that were used by the readers of www.whatwillweuse.com

1 Linux 1,122 53%
2 Mac OS X 348 16%
3 Windows XP 325 15%
4 Unknown 120 6%
5 Windows Vista 104 5%
6 Windows 7 55 3%
7 iPhone OSX 15 <1%
8 Windows 2000 10 <1%
9 Windows 2003 8 <1%
10 SunOS 3 <1%
11 Windows 98 2 <1%
12 Palm 2 <1%
13 Android 1 <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the global report for August 2009