Re: [OS:N:] When CNN says it...

[Colin Mattoon <cjm2 lewiston com>]

On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 06:50, Evan Leibovitch wrote:<and I clipped>
> 
>> 
> And, in the ultimate irony that will be missed by most of CNN's readers,
> the piece incvludes a goofy reference comparing Microsoft to communism.
>

Indeed, and this is also part of a perception problem among IT and
school administrators (at least throughout much of North America). Many,
perhaps most, tend to confuse totalitarian governments with communism,
and do not recognize that capitalism and totalitarian also often
co-exist as fascism, just as communism and democratic principles are not
mutually exclusive.

The point of my little tirade is that the GPL, and by association,
GNU/Linux, have been denigrated as "communist" in an attempt to portray
Free Software as an "evil" that threatens "good" capitalist
institutions: implicitly, Microsoft's multi-billion dollar empire. Never
mind the fact that Microsoft is part of the "military industrial
complex" that conservatives and liberals alike have warned us about
since the end of the second World War.

This is also coupled to confusion about the meaning of terms like
"hacker" (versus "cracker"), and creates an almost subconscious
awareness of Free Software as a subversive element.

I mention this to bring attention to the fact that some of the
opposition faced by Linux advocates is not based on technical
objections, nor a failure to recognize that zero cost operating systems
and applications that consume fewer machine resources than Windows and
Windows apps will save money -- but rather that Linux is seen as some
vague threat to "Western Values."

Countering that foolish belief is as important as explaining the
technical merits and cost savings that may accrue.

Later,

Colin Mattoon 


 

 
> -- 
> Evan Leibovitch, Brampton, Canada <evan at telly dot org>
> Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.
> 
> 
> 
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